047 - A full-sized crook. Rams horn, thistle-nosed handle on a dark hazel shank. Made to the requirements of a client.
2001 was not a good year to be doing this; the supply of rams horn has all but dried up with the foot-and-mouth outbreak coming hard on the heels of BSE regulations. What horn can be obtained is not of the highest quality and I had to contend with many problems along the way.
The traditional thistle was carved in one piece with the rest of the handle from a large (and difficult) horn. I coloured it with metallic paints, protected with a couple of coats of Tru-Oil. The actual colour is more of a green-purple than it appears here. (And that's after juggling with the colour balance, as I always have to do with this camera. I'll get myself a decent one some day).
There are many technical flaws in this horn, but the result is most interesting, with dashes of red (from blood blisters) here, steaks of silver and white there, flashes of gold, transparent bits and opaque bits.
This pewter stag's head decoration is embedded in clear resin on the rear of the neck. The branch-like decorations are brass-and-copper resin filling where I've cut out streaks of white "flint" which run through the horn.
In similar fashion, I inserted this resin-embedded gilt hare where I'd had to deal with a small area of de-lamination in the horn.
The client wasn't keen on using buffalo horn, so I made the spacer from a piece of burr elm and highlighted it with bands of brass-and-copper-filled resin. The picture doesn't do it justice; apart from the close-up distortion, the burr elm contrasts much more in colour with the hazel shank than it appears here.
SOLD