{"product_id":"the-elders","title":"The Elders","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt looks like several figures standing together. It is one piece of wood.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe tallest ridge runs the full height, straight up and slightly turned, the way a person stands when they have been standing a long while. Beside it and behind it the same piece breaks into shorter forms — one to the shoulder, one barely past the waist — all leaning the same direction. Walk around it and the count changes: three, then two, then something almost single again. Nothing was joined to make that happen. The water split this wood along its own grain and left a crowd behind.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe surface is worked to the bone. Deep vertical channels run the whole length in bands of dark and honey, more like carved bark than smooth driftwood, and none of it was cut. It came out of the coastal inlets of North Carolina on shrimping and fishing runs, exactly this way.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe wood is sealed in polyurethane and mounted upright on a slim metal rod above a hand-built pine base finished in a dark stain, standing twenty-five inches tall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eFor an altar, or a room that holds one\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a piece about company. Not a single figure keeping watch but a crowd of them, cut from one body — which is a different feeling to have in a room. It works at the head of an altar, on a floor beside a chair, or on a console where it has the height to be seen from across the space.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eDetails\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDimensions: 13\" W × 13¼\" D × 25\" H, including base\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWeight: 5 lb\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMaterials: A single piece of natural driftwood sealed in polyurethane, metal mounting rod, hand-built stained pine base\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOrigin: The coastal inlets of North Carolina\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePermanently mounted — the sculpture does not lift off the base\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOne of a kind — this piece will not be repeated\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003ch3\u003eThe name is only one side\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eTurn this piece and it becomes something else.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eCarved by water\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eCare\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eDust with a dry, soft cloth, working down with the vertical channels. Keep out of direct sunlight and away from moisture. For indoor display.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Red Velvet Pumpkin Patch","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53724156461349,"sku":"AA-005","price":365.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0684\/1230\/9797\/files\/TheElders1AA-005.png?v=1788311390","url":"https:\/\/thevelvetpumpkin.com\/products\/the-elders","provider":"The Red Velvet Pumpkin Patch","version":"1.0","type":"link"}