Found Foundry Art

I know, you must be starting to think that I'm some sort of frenzied schizophrenic phrenetic manic multiple personality scatterbrain, the way I keep heading off on tangents right and left... but bear with me a while, each single strand works its way into the weft and woof in whatever warped way, slowly forming the tapestry which is this magic lantern show, just like in Washington there is a museum called the Phillips Collection, well, this blog is the Owen Collection, which has been nearly 50 years in the making, as unbelievable to me as that may be.

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This piece of the collection is what is known as a foundry form. Foundry forms were made by master woodworkers to extremely accurate specifications, and then used to make a negative by baking a mixture of sand and molasses in the form, which gave them their lovely lustrous colors after having been used. The negative forms thereby created were used to cast iron around to make parts for ships or other heavy machinery. Quite some years ago I was in the right place at the right time, and was able to pick through a huge pile of foundry forms that was being thrown out by the owners of a warehouse in Chester, Pennsylvania, thus adding a few pieces like this one to the Owen collection.

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