This piece of steel, bone handle material, steel wire pins, and its weathered mounting board came from the dusty remains of a homestead in Saskatchewan, Canada. Around the turn of the century the blade would have served as a leaf-spring on a horse-drawn farm wagon, the pins were barbed wire around a cattle enclosure, and the bone was possibly still part of a living bovine. When I collected the raw materials, very little else remained of what was once an active family homestead. I wanted to create something new while honouring the remnants of the past and preserving some of the beautiful and unique surfaces left from one hundred years of weather and corrosion.
This is the second of a set of two pieces that have come from the wagon spring to date. The first was a materials testing prototype and this piece was commissioned to be presented as a commemorative gift to the family of the original settler.
Material: Reclaimed wagon spring steel, mineralized bone, steel, barnboard
This piece is in a private collection in Alberta.
