“Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.” -Ursula K. LeGuin This is a bronze sword I made for the upcoming exhibition, “The Sword- Form and Thought” at the Deutsches Klingenmuseum in Solingen Germany. It is …
Vardhllokur – spirit song 2009 A viking sword from across the border of myth. This sword is a 3 bar composite pattern welded construction. The edge billet is 61 layers and the two center billets are 9 layers each, the steels used in it’s construction are 1075 and 8670m. The …
A dagger is like a distillation of a sword, a sword-seed, and therefore perfect for a wizard. Perhaps the world is not as it seems. The forces that hold things together may be uncertain, not as we imagine them. The fourth dimension, ancient time, might be filled with secrets— secrets …
Autumn seems full of secrets. Flame colored leaves cast the forest in a different light than the clear light that touches the fields. Mist hangs over the trees where the hidden brook wends its way through the valley. It’s a time for bonfires and gathering the last things in— stacking wood, …
Anvil translated from its early root anfilte roughly means “build-on” — the object which the smith builds things on. The anvil is the altar at which the smith shapes the world; it has a kind of magical appeal. It is solid and massive. It is a symbol of weight and …
I filmed this with help from my dad (Peter Powning) and a tripod back in 2009. It demonstrates some of the process of making the Viking sword Vardhllokur. It was edited by the good people at Galatia Films for the special features of the movie “Reclaiming The Blade”. If you’re …
The sun flares red across the landing strip, casting its long fingers down above mountains as I board my midnight flight leaving Anchorage, Alaska. On the 25th of May I arrived in the same airport in late afternoon. I had slept through much of the flight and woke …
This is a preview of a DVD which includes two presentations that I did at the Arctic Fire Swordsmithing event in Alaska in June of 2012, as well as several interviews. There is also footage of Swordsmiths Michael Pikula, David Delagardelle, Don Fogg, Peter Johnsson and J. Arthur Loose. This …
The sun cuts low through winter trees, woodsmoke hangs in the air. Walking through the forest one day I find what’s left of a raven dance, the steps clear in the snow. I can see where a raven has scratched it’s beak back and forth drawing concentric lines. As part …
I rise before the sun, the scratchy radio voices catalog what bad things have happened in the world while I slept. But the world tells a different story– out the old farmhouse window the dawn blooms impossible colours against the somnabulant landscape. Two ravens sit warily in the orchard on …