* The Four Seasons in Sixteen Stone Worth of Silver *
Jan van Nouhuys, "Winter in Narnia" 2002, silver (925), 100 cm tall.
| Of the four silversmiths, Jan van Nouhuys is the best known. His sculpture depicts winter, and is based on a C.S. Lewis story entitled "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", about a small boy who while playing hide and seek in a vast empty mansion strays into a wardrobe full of fur coats and, through the cupboard's missing back, ends up in a country called Narnia, where it's always winter. The jingling reflection of the specially hammered sides of silver plates transformed into doors renders the frozen landscape almost tangible. Although Van Nouhuys in his free work usually sticks much closer to objects which still have a user function, the monumental dimension he confers upon these objects makes it the most natural thing altogether to forget about their function. |
Jan van Nouhuys, "Trigonaal" 1999, silver (925), 23 x 23 x 19 cm.
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