King of Exmoor

I was delighted to drop in to Tom Lock's workshop in Hawkridge, after talking to a nice gang of Somerset artists at the 'Reveal' event recently.
I had asked Tom to consider making a 'head-dress' for the Exmoor National Dress a while back, but as his lifetime retrospective (at Hawkridge Show, see pic) was absorbing all his time he declined....But I know real no from a 'well....no' and I had a feeling he was going to come up with something good.
Here Tom is modelling the prototype - it will eventually have little antlers in declining size all the way round. The head-dress 'ring' is made of 4 or 5 curved antler pieces carefully glued and sanded, it's quite a feat to find suitably curved pieces let alone to fix them together. What I especially like is the front-most horn, which Tom describes as "freaky" - its a tiny straight horn emerging from a misshapen, bony nugget. He'd had it for years, finding it useless for most of his work, but now has a good use for the freaky!
I tried it on and can confirm that it's actually comfy too....

Posted Monday 22nd September, 2008 at 11:47 am by Karen