Boundary Event
Silver, Irish bog iron bloom
The Anthropocene or Human Epoch has been proposed as a term to describe the current geological period defined by the impact of humanity on the natural environment. In the title Boundary Event, I refer to Donna J Haraway’s writing - her hope that the Anthropocene is a boundary event rather than an Epoch, and the possibility that we could make it as short a period as possible followed by a time of global recovery.
As a silversmith we usually purchase our precious metals as pristine manufactured sheet, bar, and wire with limited understanding or oversight of the destructive mining and global supply chains involved. This piece combines silver with iron, celebrating an alternate and more local form of material production - Irish bog iron smelted in a bloomery furnace. This bloom was smelted on a sunny day with blue skies in the Burren in County Clare, with bog ore from Offaly, charcoal from coppiced Wicklow Sweet Chestnut, in a furnace built from Monaghan clay.