RUST REVERED

(re-post)

I very much like what Nature does to metal. Rust! Oh, maybe not when it happens on my car or to bolts that even WD40 sighs about, but - to shovels and horse shoes and ice tongs and railway ties - yes! The aforementioned are all art in my garden. The rust on the items gives colour and texture and a sense of the many layers of things. The rust rubs shoulders with the earth. Now I want to bring that patina indoors: an iron candlestick that has sat on the deck and nicely rusted across two years, now has the red malabar spinach twined merrily (and still producing spinach!) around it, and an old kitchen stool with the fold out steps that has served as a table beside one of the chaise lounge for the past season. The stool is not the chrome type, no, older than that, metal supports. I took off the wooden seat (warped and water-stained and rather beautiful in itself but not in this context) and the steps (pressboard - ugly) and put a rusted oven shelf on top. It is waiting on a space to occur indoors and will move inside. I am on the alert for tops for the steps. Something will present.

Having written the above it occurred to me to see what the Web had to offer. I gleefully Googled (the emotion due to previous experience and hardly ever disappointed!) and decorative rust came up with 159 suggestions in .87 seconds; a brief browse makes me think these are all manufactured rust so I tried rust appreciation and I didn't manage to confound Google (I fully expect, one day, the screen to say, "Well, that is certainly a most interesting item to search for - I'm stumped!") but the offerings were diverse and obscure and if there is a web site of appreciated and showcased rusted items, I did not find it.

Posted on October 18, 2004 at 12:13 PM 

I very much like what Nature does to metal. Rust! Oh, maybe not when it happens on my car or to bolts that even WD40 sighs about, but - to shovels and horse shoes and ice tongs and railway ties - yes! The aforementioned are all art in my garden. The rust on the items gives colour and texture and a sense of the many layers of things. The rust rubs shoulders with the earth. Now I want to bring that patina indoors: an iron candlestick that has sat on the deck and nicely rusted across two years, now has the red malabar spinach twined merrily (and still producing spinach!) around it, and an old kitchen stool with the fold out steps that has served as a table beside one of the chaise lounge for the past season. The stool is not the chrome type, no, older than that, metal supports. I took off the wooden seat (warped and water-stained and rather beautiful in itself but not in this context) and the steps (pressboard - ugly) and put a rusted oven shelf on top. It is waiting on a space to occur indoors and will move inside. I am on the alert for tops for the steps. Something will present.

Having written the above it occurred to me to see what the Web had to offer. I gleefully Googled (the emotion due to previous experience and hardly ever disappointed!) and decorative rust came up with 159 suggestions in .87 seconds; a brief browse makes me think these are all manufactured rust so I tried rust appreciation and I didn't manage to confound Google (I fully expect, one day, the screen to say, "Well, that is certainly a most interesting item to search for - I'm stumped!") but the offerings were diverse and obscure and if there is a web site of appreciated and showcased rusted items, I did not find it.