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![](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ASHLEY-CHILDS-photo-by-Garrett-Grove.jpg)
elk & HAMMER founder Ashley Childs forging hammers in Washington State. Picture by Garrett Grove
All of it begins with a narrative. That’s the premise behind elk & HAMMER, a web based gallery that includes a world collective of artisans and makers redefining what it’s to reside and work, discovering a symbiosis between the 2 in a way each new and really, very outdated.
After jewellery designer, blacksmith, knife-maker, and gallery founder Ashley Childs produced her ultimate jewellery assortment, she adopted a ardour years within the making and launched elk & HAMMER. The modern on-line gallery connects artists with each other and their respective artforms, these artforms with an viewers, and that viewers with a narrative. “We’re a world of one-click purchasing, all the pieces quick and faceless,” says Childs. “However to select up a knife each morning and butter your bread is an expertise, made much more beautiful when that butter knife was hand-forged by a blacksmith who spent many years refining their craft, whose story you realize, whose face you’ve seen. That could be a stunning factor.”
elk & HAMMER at the moment includes a rising physique of labor from sculptors, ceramicists, designers, painters, metalsmiths, and extra. Every addition to the gallery represents one other story in an ever-evolving tome exalting each the maker and the made. A kind of makers is Childs’ oldest buddy and mentor, Steve Schwarzer, a hall-of-fame bladesmith who has spent the previous 50 years studying from those who got here earlier than, honing his craft, and redefining the artwork of mosaic Damascus metal.
U.Ok. leather-based employee and designer Otis Ingrams is equally impressed by the godfathers of his craft and design vernacular. Ingrams established OTZI Studios in 2013 and has since been fastidiously handcrafting distinctive British, Spanish, and Italian utility items.
![](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/OTIS-INGRAMS-2-Quarto-Leather-Baskets-Tan-and-Black.jpg)
Otis Ingrams, two Quarto Leather-based Baskets in tan and black. Picture by Mitchell D. Cohen
T.A.G. (Tom) Smith taught himself the deep-rooted artwork of intarsia as an adolescent, slowly curating the craft into a singular celebration of the feathers and fowl he has beloved simply as lengthy. Smith’s hanging picket sculptures marry the pure artistry of wooden grain along with his personal model of impressed imaginative and prescient.
Genso and Asemi Co.—two Japanese enterprises connecting Bizen pottery with households worldwide—showcase the best in conventional Japanese craftsmanship and the vary of makers reimagining its centuries-old presence for the up to date world.
Up to date design innovation is on the coronary heart of British luxurious model founder and inventive director Tom Dixon’s imaginative and prescient. An business maverick because the Nineteen Eighties, Dixon’s furnishings, lighting, and equipment intention to display the transformative nature of artwork in utilitarian contexts.
Whether or not it’s fantastic jewellery from Kabana or Kurtulan, knives and instruments from Banshu Hamono or Messermeister, Kindrie Grove’s bronze sculptures or Nest Homeware’s forged iron kitchenware, the elk & HAMMER gallery hopes to supply an evocative, globally-informed assortment that evokes presence and reference to shared tales of on a regular basis life, by means of traditions relationship again to humanity’s inception.
Go to elkandhammer.com to view the gallery and comply with them on Instagram @elkandhammer.
You can even discover extra tales and movies on elk & HAMMER’s Vimeo and YouTube.
![](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/STEVE-SCHWARZER-mosaic-damscus-gentlemans-folders-with-gold-lip-pearl.jpg)
Steve Schwarzer, mosaic Damascus gentleman’s folders with gold lip pearl, with canister mosaic Damascus Wharncliffe blades. All images by Ashley Childs except in any other case specified
![](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/TAG-Tom-Smith-of-the-UK-Intarsia-Great-Grey-Owl-Feather-Photo-by-Ashley-Childs.jpg)
T.A.G. (Tom) Smith of the U.Ok., “Nice Gray Owl Tail Feather” in ash, walnut, sycamore, and Swiss pear wooden
![](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/GENSO-of-Japan-Sangiri-and-Goma-Mugs-and-Cups-photo-by-Ashley-Childs.jpg)
Genso, Sangiri and Goma mugs, cups, and Saki cup
![](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/TOM-DIXON-of-the-UK-Bash-Bowl-and-Tray-and-Cloud-Bowl-Large.jpg)
Tom Dixon, Brass Bash Bowl & Tray and Massive Aluminum Cloud Bowl
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