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Wire sculpture is a folk art with a history dating back thousands of years. Wherever the technology has existed to refine metal and draw wire, artisans have found ways to adapt the material creatively. Ancient Egyptians hand-crafted wire jewelry whose beauty endures to this day; many examples can be found in museums.
Starting over 400 years ago, wireworkers from the mountain regions of Slovakia invented many ingenious and practical items still in common use today - bird cages, mouse traps, wire baskets and trays, sieves and other kitchen utensils. Known as "tinkers", these wireworkers' ability to invent and fabricate otherwise unattainable devices lent them high status and respectability throughout Europe's middle ages. Because their services were essential, traveling tinkers selling wares were permitted to cross borders without restriction.
The twentieth century brought trials to the once-prosperous tinkers' community. Russian collectivazation doomed once-flourishing wirecraft businesses in Russia and Slovakia. In the wake of World War II, wire products came into mass production. Without their centuries-long monopoly on wirecrafted goods, tinkers saw their social prestige and economic security diminish; many were reduced to the hardship of mending wire goods, rather than creating them.
Somehow, a dedicated few wirecrafters like Vladimir Ferko and Ladislav Jurovaty kept their craft alive, preserving their traditions and teaching their techniques. A 400-yar-old wirecraft museum can be found in Zilina, Slovakia. In reverence to a craft that came close to disappearing in the wake of the industrial revolution, master wirecrafters hand down their traditional techniques to a new generation of contemporary wire sculptors.
South Africa has a thriving cultural heritage of wire sculpture also known as wire art. Children who could not afford luxuries like cars, phones, and motorcycles would make themselves toy versions from bits of scrap wire. This innovative approach to improvisation gradually led to the development of a thriving cottage industry. Today, street vendors craft and sell toy cars, animals, and household accessories. Many are exported for trade on the international market.
Wherever they live in the world, many wire sculptors first came in contact with wire as part of their everyday environment. A surprising number of wireworkers either grew up on a farm or came to live on one later in life. In rural settings, wire is readily at hand in many forms. Fencing wire, chicken wire, baling wire, phone wire, electrical wire, welding rods, and even barbed wire offer inventive potential to the creative mind. A jumbled heap of scrap wire might suggest a willow tree, a buffalo, a reclining human form... and a farmer might pause a moment to bend the wire a little bit more into that shape, starting a long personal journey toward becoming a wire sculptor.
Explore the International Wire Sculptors Directory
Finally - a comprehensive Definition of Wire Sculpture
Learn How to care for wire sculpture
Now forming - Wire Sculpture International, the Wire Sculptors Guild
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World Class Wire Sculpture · Elizabeth Berrien
Inquiries: (707) 445-4931 · Email: wirezoo@earthlink.net
Content and images copyright © 1968-2006 Elizabeth Berrien. All rights reserved.
Updated Jan 6, 2005 · this page valid HTML 4.01
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