090 - "Caseg LLwyd" (the brown mare)
A stripped blackthorn staff with cherry wood stand.
This rather special staff was commissioned by a client who wanted to use it for both hiking and ceremonial purposes. My brief was to select a characterful piece of blackthorn of suitable dimensions and work it into a freestyle staff, letting the wood itself dictate the final result as far as possible. My client would then have a good look and feel of the staff, which would tell her what inscription I should carve into it in Ogham characters.
In addition, I would try to find a suitable log of wood to be fashioned into a simple stand for the staff.
I selected a long, medium-weight blackthorn shank with a piece of branch attached. Then I shaped the top end more by feel than eye, to provide a number of alternative comfortable hand-grips.
The visual result vaguely suggests various creatures - possibly a horse, a snake, a fish, a pig, a deer, or whatever else you can see in there.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the staff told its new owner it should be named "Caseg Llwyd", (Welsh for "The Brown Mare"), and this is recorded in the Ogham inscription. (Ogham is an ancient Celtic writing system - for more about this see http://members.aol.com/irishdremr/oghamintro.html).
I looked for a suitable place to add the inscription, found a little thorn-knot in just the right place, and used this as the origin of the vertical line on which traditional Ogham is based. This side of the shank was a little plain compared to the other views, so I touched in the inscription with a gold marker pen before applying the Tru-Oil finish. This seems to balance things up nicely.
This area appears quite pale in the image below, but this is because that area had been freshly worked - it will mellow rapidly, and the whole of the staff will darken significantly as it ages.
I noted the end of the shank splayed out slightly, and suggested we retain this by adding a solid hard-wearing tip instead of the conventional brass ferrule. Animal products were verboten, so I fashioned this from the same black phenolic material that I used for the Bristol Old Vic's staff. In the event, this treatment proved ideal, suggesting a horse's hoof (further enhanced by a fortuitous knot in the blackthorn hinting at the shape of the fetlock).
We searched my wood store for a suitable log to make the stand from and eventually came across a lovely piece of cherry lurking in a dark corner. I think I owe a friend a beer or two for this - thanks Ed! This had lots of sticky-out bits, three of which could be cut to provide a solid three-legged base for the stand.
I trimmed down the remaining branch stubs, tidied everything up a bit and bored a hole through the middle to take the Brown Mare's fetlock. Finally I smoothed down the gorgeous bark and sealed and wax-polished it.
Again, there are hints of various animals lurking in the resulting shape - mainly wild boar, at least that's what it suggests to me.
SOLD (a most unusual and interesting commission)