Linda Brothwell, an artist who sees history in tools
Linda Brothwell has made 40 silver and copper vessels for Stonehenge’s first contemporary art exhibition. Her real passion, however is for the tools she makes to create her art
I was approached by Gingko Projects, who were doing a series of artists’ commissions around Amesbury, near Stonehenge.
As the project developed and I researched the local area, I wanted to make a series of objects. The natural thing to do with that is to exhibit them so the community can see them, so
I asked English Heritage if we might show them at Stonehenge, and happily they agreed.
I’m very interested in tools as a way of talking about lives and heritage, and the materials of a place. Because I’m looking historically as well as at modern trades and craftspeople, I decided to choose one particular thread which meant that I could look at the location as opposed to the time period. This was to look at a vessel as one of the first tools.
It works very well historically, with the Neolithic pieces, Beaker culture etc, but actually also with the Air Force, which is recent history, and then the modern makers, craftspeople and tradespeople. Whether it’s a Sports Direct mug on your shelf holding your paintbrushes or sets of wooden drawers holding your drill bits, everybody understands the idea of containing, and a vessel as a tool.
I’m interested in the idea of being buried with your tools like the Amesbury Archer, the idea of that use in the afterlife, and also the idea of the ceremonial objects and the very tiny vessels and tiny axes that were buried with people. I hope that people like the exhibition, local people especially can come and spend some time at Stonehenge.
When it ends I’m giving the vessels away. I will give about 20 to 30 personally to local individuals and community buildings, let’s say the primary school, so people can see them and hold them, put their toothbrushes in them or whatever happens, you know. The vessels were influenced by the landscape, and so they will go back to always exist within the landscape.
I also wanted to look at the movement of people and materials to that area, that’s hugely positive: gold coming from Ireland, or a jade axehead and the Archer from the Alps. I’d like hopefully to create some links with some of the institutions and countries that are related to Stonehenge in terms of migrations of people, and gift vessels abroad as well.
I’m a metalsmith – I trained at the Royal College of Art and in Sheffield – so making metal vessels, using these ancient techniques of raising, is something that I have done before: I work in lots of materials, but I think of metal as my foundation material. I had to make tools to create these vessels, because as a metalworker you do, because everything is so specific. Generally speaking, I exhibit tools that I use to make public-sited artwork, but for this project they wanted it to work slightly differently and those tools aren’t at Stonehenge, they will just exist.
I hand-make lots of tools, partly because I simply have to, but also because I want to talk about specificity and skill, and the idea of using the right tool for the right job. So to an obsessive degree I create series of tools which are almost a manifesto, a kind of call to action of showing how we used to have so many different types of hammers, and so many different types of chisels, and how people did work very closely in their job with a particular set of materials and a particular set of tools.
Our tools are an active object of themselves. They invite the imagination: what could you do when you hold something, what’s possible with it, what can you repair or create? Tools are often passed down through generations. That used to happen more, with apprenticeships and familial links with particular trades such as thatching, but still tools do link us to our heritage.
I collect tools. I travel around the world talking to traditional craftspeople and dying crafts, and I document the tools they have and the tools they’ve kept. Actually for me, tools are a more interesting way of talking about their lives and the objects they create. Often traditional craftspeople don’t see a strong connection with the art objects they create, sometimes at very high prices. The intimate conversation they have on a day to day basis is with the tools around them.
I’ve worked with metal since I was 16, and I trained as a jeweller. I was making £20,000 rings, but I was never interested in external validation, that idea of showing off jewellery. I was always interested in the very personal conversation you have with your object. It could be a pebble from the beach that your daughter handed you, or a 2-carat diamond, I don’t really mind. It’s the agency of the objects I’m interested in. I grew up in the countryside, I’m used to having a ball of string and a nail in my pocket at all times. It’s that interest of people, and the objects, and the kind of strength and the positive way of existing in the world, when you can use tools.
Interview Mike Pitts