The Wareham Forge


Sculptural Objects and Decorative Accessories:

Related Sections

Mirrors
Candleabras home windbiles containers
Mirrors
Frame your reflection
with forged beauty.
Candelabras
Lighting up your world.
Furnature
&
Home Accessories

Expressing Your Unique Style
Sculptural
Windbiles

Powered by wind and imagination
Bowls & Containers
More than just a place to put things
sculptural
Purely Sculptural
Increasingly, my personal work becomes focused on fine art sculptural works.

This includes smaller pieces - outside the series work in the next section.

Significant has been larger pieces, especially a number created for the Elora Sculpture Project.
artist-layers
Public Sculpture
songs

Songs of Distant Oceans
... Is a series of purely sculptural objects, inspired by Oceans - past and present :
Altantic Realm - Reflections of East Coast Shores
Shades of Ancient Seas - Fantastic Fishes, moved by the wind
Hallucigenia - Creatures Based on the amazing Burgess Shale

These series pieces have been given their own descriptive section.

medusamedusa

'Blue Medusa' stands 36 cm / 14 inches,
the base is roughly 33 x 28 cm / 13 x 11 inches
The glass insert is 18 x 13 cm / 7 x 5 inches

'Blue Medusa'
mild steel with decorative paint / commercial glass insert
Spring 2017

Available - $325

Several years back, I had purchased a set of these deep blue cylinders of blown glass, in three different sizes / proportions.
When teaching, I end up with a lot of 1/2 and 3/8 diameter round rod, with long tapering cylindrical points (technique being illustrated). What to do with these?
The inspiration was to forge the points into snake like combinations of spirals and reversal curves. These were then bundled together to create a basket like support around the glass form. The metal has been painted here a dark blue to echo the glass.
hanger
'Hanger for my Autumn Coat & Hat'
forged angle & mild steel with decorative paint
Summer 2008

Available - $200


This piece was created specifically for the Gallery presentation at the annual 'Quad State Roundup' held in September by Ohio Forge & Anvil. This is a large regional blacksmith's event, attracting well over 1000 participants.
Every year, in addition to the open categories that display contemporary work, they announce a special theme. That year, the theme was 'hanger'. I normally try to play with theme, concentrating on design concepts, rather than shear technical prowess.
'Hanger for my Autumn Coat & Hat' is a smaller piece, 11 inches at widest and 27 inches long. It uses various application of the shouldering tool to crimp and create 3-D profiles. The piece is painted a very dark brown, with copper highlights in the inside of the 'feathers'.
urn
urn
                  top
'Segmented Urn'
forged and fabricated wrought iron & copper
Fall 2008

" The body of the urn is composed of a number of individually hand forged strips of antique wrought iron. I saw samples of the basic technique employed by the Japanese blacksmith Takayoshi Komine at a workshop / demonstration two summers past. (Taka uses the method to make subtle oil lamps employed in the Tea Ceremony.) Actual historic wrought iron has been chosen for the construction because of its excellent forging characteristics and special durability. The metal itself is already some 150 years old — and should easily endure for centuries more. A fitting resting place for the memories of one past beyond us. "

For more details on the thought behind and creation of this object - Go on to a detailed description
fire at
                  heart

Overall View

Close up of Glass Core
flame
                    heart detail Detail of Paintwork
'Fire at Heart'
forged mild steel structural bars with decorative paint
hand blown glass by Catherine Vamvakas Lay
Fall 2008

"Fire at Heart" was one of a limited number of new sculptural pieces I created in early summer of 2007. I decided this year to focus on producing a number of concept pieces to illustrate directions I had wanted to approach for some time as an artisan. The glass spear at the core of this piece was the original inspiration. It was formed by Toronto glass artist Catherine Vamvakas Lay. She had given me the piece to have a much simpler wall mount made for it. I was struck by its quality, and was driven to forge this fantastic plant form to hold it instead. The subtle colours within the glass suggested the washes of blue, green and yellow used on the metalwork. The piece was sold within hours of its first public display.
glass
                hanger glass
                hanger This image is of an Art Nouveau styled hanger for a blown glass vase. I had picked up the vase from a glass artist years earlier. (This is an early piece - from the early 1990's) The individual rods that make up the hanger both change profile from flat to round, but also form reversal curve tendrils. This is one of my favourite small pieces and remains in my own collection.

The glass insert is 8 inches tall, the overall height of the complete piece is 20 inches.
old wolf
dragon fork
These two items show the potential of forged steel as a flexible decorative material. The "Old Wolf Broach" (1990) is a modern variation on the ancient penanular type, and was made as one of a matched pair. Despite it's small size (about 2 1/2"), it uses a large number of individual techniques. It is often MORE difficult to work on this small scale, as it is hard to localize the heated area to control the effects!
The punched Dragon Head (8/91) also uses a number of forming steps. This piece was inspired by a pair of Celtic Iron Age fire dogs found in Wales. It forms one end of a long toasting fork. I have not worked very much with 3-D punching, a technique that also exploits the 'plastic' nature of the hot metal.
"Old Wolf Broach"
"Dragon Head Fork"

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All text & images © Darrell Markewitz - the Wareham Forge