May 25, 2012
Galloping into the present with new purpose!
Shandong Province lies along China’s East Coast. The name Shandong means “east of the mountains,” a reference to the province’s Taihang Mountains, the place where Taoism and Confucianism were born. Yet, it is the flat terrain of the rest of the province where this week’s new arrival was brought into being over 400 years ago, on China’s vast northern plain at the intersection of ancient trading routes.
Back then, there were no trucks, planes or high speed trains. Those means of conveyance were not even a dream. What moved the bolts of silk, the barrels of spices, the lock boxes of luxury goods and the people who cared for them, were carts and wagons powered by caravans of countless horses moving in a constant, slow, clippity-clop flow along well-traveled, rock hard, pounded roads.
Dotting the roads at regular intervals were numerous inns and rest stops; places to eat, sleep, and fill people and horses with whatever was needed. For horses, the menu was simple – hay and oats – with water to follow served in simple, rectangular, utilitarian troughs cut from granite quarried in the nearby mountains; until the advent of modern transportation made horses and the troughs a thing of the past.
This week’s new arrival features one such trough. We dressed it up and gave it new life – repurposed it – by fabricating a solid wood base to showcase its rustic good looks and simple, elegant, hand chiseled form. Now it can be used indoors or out, perhaps as a planter, a pond for koi fish, even a miniature Zen garden. It stands as a reminder that obsolescence can become obsolete when the past is brought into the present.
Horse trough (4 available)
Shandong Province, China
17th/18th C.
Stone
43'' W x 23'' D x 21” H
$3,495 each
Part of a much larger collection of stone planters and vessels in a wide range of sizes and prices.
