Long Memory

Thirty-one inches tall, and from the side almost nothing at all.

Face it and you get a broad standing form rising to a crown of narrow points, the grain running the full height in ribbons of honey and grey, with deep black voids opening through the body where the water took the softer wood out entirely. Step ninety degrees and it nearly disappears — a blade, an edge, a line drawn in the room.

It is the largest freestanding piece we make and the heaviest, and it does not read as any one thing. Head on, the ridges stack up the whole height like layers of something kept. Turn it to the profile and a long face appears in the edge. Turn it again and it is a flame, or a feather, or a figure standing at full height with its head thrown back. Long enough in the water to become all of them.

Nothing was carved. It came out of the coastal inlets of North Carolina, found on shrimping and fishing runs. The wood is sealed in polyurethane and mounted upright on a rod above a wide hand-built pine base finished in a dark stain.

For an altar, or a room that holds one

This is the piece to build a space around rather than add to one. At thirty-one inches it works standing on the floor beside a chair or a doorway, at the head of an altar, or on a low console where it has room overhead. Give it a wall behind it and light from the side — the black voids read as depth when the light comes across rather than straight on.

Details

• Dimensions: 13 1/4" W × 13¼" D × 31" H, including base
• Weight: 9 lb 3 oz
• Materials: Natural driftwood sealed in polyurethane, metal mounting rod, hand-built stained pine base
• Origin: The coastal inlets of North Carolina
• Permanently mounted — the sculpture does not lift off the base
• One of a kind — this piece will not be repeated

The name is only one side

Turn this piece and it becomes something else.

That is true of everything we make, and it is the reason none of these sculptures has a front. We name each one for what we saw first — the angle that stopped us. Rotate it a quarter turn and the figure you were looking at is gone, and a different one is standing there. Ridges become a face. A wing becomes a wave. A crowd becomes one body.

So the name is our reading, not an instruction. Set it whichever way it speaks to you, and turn it again when it stops. People who live with these pieces tend to move them a few times a year without quite deciding to.

Carved by water

Not one line in this wood was cut by a blade. Every groove, hollow, and ridge was worked slowly — by salt, by tide, by years in the water — along a coast that has fed and carried people for generations. We think of these as pieces already carved by hands older than ours and left on the shore to be found.

What we do is small by comparison. We find them, we preserve them as they are, and we give them a base to stand on so they can be seen. Sometimes two pieces are set together because they belong together — but the wood itself is never cut, shaped, stained, or painted. Nothing is corrected. The wood says what it already had to say.

Care

Dust with a dry, soft cloth, working down with the grain. The narrow points at the crown are the most delicate part of the piece. Keep out of direct sunlight and away from moisture. For indoor display.