STONE STACK SLAG
Okay, so its name may be lacking, but its beauty is not. This slag is the byproduct of an industry of 200 years ago that could be found across North America and Europe. The stone stack iron furnaces were state of the art technology at the time, and of the hundreds that existed, only seven remain standing, and one just happens to be in my town, Franconia, NH. The glassy slag was of no interest to those early metal makers, so it got dumped into the river where it can be found today...hot day, water shoes, lovely blue, green, gray, black hues shining up at the sky....heaven on earth for sure. And to honor both the early workers, the industry in general, and the fun in finding, I work it just a bit, favoring its organic and irregular shapes, and set it into silver to be worn and cherished. Because it can be a porous material, at times I borrow from the idea of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of celebrating the broken (usually pottery) by fixing it with gold. In this case, I use a metallic powder mixed into resin, so not exactly gold gold, but it looks just like it. And this is not to "fix" anything, it's more to fill in cavities and crevices, and to add a bit of sparkle on some pieces, but not all. And just so you know, another name for the slag could be Iron Age Turquoise.
