One of the nice things about being approaching 60, having done and been a bunch of different things, is I have a pretty solid view of my capabilities. So I don’t feel bad when I see someone who is light years better than me at a thing, since I know that what I’m seeing is someone who made different choices in their path, and it’s alright that I didn’t compete with them.
Because, if I didn’t have a pretty strong sense of myself, I’d be face down on my keyboard weeping tears of “I quit!” if I insisted on stacking my work up against Peter Johnsson. His work is what I think of as “high art” – it combines technical skill with visual artistry and creativity in production – there’s no simple part about his process at all, and the final result is a blend of effects that seem simple; that’s the hallmark of great art. I can tell you that there is absolutely nothing simple about Johnsson’s work. Sure, he’s using found textures in his waxes, but that’s brilliant (and it’s still damn hard!) – that’s another point about what he’s doing: his work isn’t just fine fitted, it’s difficult by design and its visually unique and striking.
His instagram is here [inst] – you might guess that, with output like his, he doesn’t post a lot.
that looks like wax cast rotten plywood
I assume these were machined in and then polished somehow. oh my god. maybe he did them on a CNC mill.
I love the echoes of Benin bronzes in the last one. Somehow it’s feminine – like a knife for a goddess.
Anyhow, that’s enough. Check him out on instgram if you want to see more,
Wow. Just wow. Thank you for sharing this with us! Just beautiful!
Wow indeed, amazing.
“Not that I’m jealous of your work, Mr. Johnsson but, have you advanced past rotten plywood, yet?”
I quit!
Oh my isn’t that gorgeous. Talk about a strong, clear vision of what he wanted to do!
I had an early sense I would never be “the best” at anything, although one thing I do, I’m the only person on the planet doing it… still, that does not make a person the best. There will always be someone who is better… but I think if you talk to them, they think someone *else* is better. I think that’s OK; I think you just do the best you can.
@#4: Don’t quit yet. You know how the better is the enemy of the good? Just relax.
I’m not sure I like them, but fuck that is some impressive work!
The detail on the pommel on the second one is cool, i wonder how he did that?
I’ve settled with being solidly competent at best. I don’t have the single minded drive to ever be absolutely amazing at any one task, i would rather learn to do a bunch of things to a decent standard.
That’s talent. And patience. And vision combined with hard work. A master craftsman, for cure.
oops- I meant for sure.
Well, they’re arty. But, would they function as they should?
After all, they’re supposed to be tools, and for those, utility should always be primary.
Objects are not gendered, other than by attribution. Tsk.
(Also, the fishtail butt looks crude and clumsy and impractical to me — you got a thing for mermaids or something?)
They are certainly pretty to look at, and I’m certain take an incredible amount of skill in various methods to create…
But, (as much as I hate to echo John Morales…), They don’t strike me as terribly functional – maybe it’s minor enough as to be effectively insignificant, but I’d be somewhat concerned about the weird fullers maybe creating stress risers and such, and then the pommel on that third one looks like any sort of wrist-cut would be completely out of the question…
Then again, I’m not good at fine art and such. I think it’s important, and don’t want to dismiss it, I’m just not very good at understanding/appreciating it, and I’d rather leave that to others. My aesthetics tend to favor natural/organic forms/patterns and wear through use. It may be a pretty simple preference, and not terribly refined or whatever, but I’m not much of a fan of decoration for decoration’s sake on my own stuff, and it’s what I like, and I’m okay with that.
Maybe, maybe not. But I don’t care. They are completely gorgeous. The existence of gold and silver blades proves that even in knives and swords, even three thousand or more years ago, functionality wasn’t everything.
Very off topic for this post, but what happened to the post about the x-86 backdoor? I did not get a chance to watch it yesterday, but I had the intention to come back and watch it when I had more time. And now, it isn’t here. Was Marcus taken into the back room and “educated” about posting such stuff by people in dark suits and sunglasses?
dangerousbeans@#7:
The detail on the pommel on the second one is cool, i wonder how he did that?
Looks like the pommel is textured steel(?) and he carved or milled the eye-shape, then built a fitted gold setting and mounted the piece of meteorite (that’s what that is) in it. I’m assuming that most of this is hand-work because it’s unique and perfectly fitted, which would not be worth setting up a CNC pass to do.
The longsword’s pommel appears to be gilded shakudo (gold/copper bronze) and was probably cast.
As you can imagine, I’d really love to spend a few days asking him “how did you do that!?”
I’ve settled with being solidly competent at best. I don’t have the single minded drive to ever be absolutely amazing at any one task, i would rather learn to do a bunch of things to a decent standard.
It doesn’t seem to me to make a difference. Being solidly good at what you do is the successful 99% who show up every day. Although, I’ve got to say that the top end players like Johnsson also show up every day.
In my opinion, the main trick is to know what you want to do and understand where you are in terms of abilities, and then to play as hard as you can at that level.
John Morales@#10:
Well, they’re arty. But, would they function as they should?
After all, they’re supposed to be tools, and for those, utility should always be primary.
Would they function as swords? Of course. Quite well, too. The sword with the eye-shaped meteorite pommel, for one, is basically a Roman gladius – one of the historical swords with the greatest history of blood-letting. Even a katana has to take backseat to a gladius; the Japanese were tough but nowhere near as murderous as the Romans.
So, yeah, picture me reading your comment and going “WTF, John Morales, are you talking about?”
The longsword is pretty effective-looking, too. The balance looks good and it’s blade is basically a German renaissance bastard sword. The guard is fancy but it’d work well and it would suffice.
Maybe you don’t like the large pommel on the ceremonial sword. First off: “ceremonial sword” but otherwise the blade and guard are similar to a Spanish renaissance “cinquedea” left-hand sword. Personally, I prefer a wakizashi and a katana but plenty of people discovered that cinquedea can be effective.
On another front, you write:
Objects are not gendered, other than by attribution. Tsk.
“feminine” means something very different from “female” – I am not saying that the sword is literally female. The curves are intended to be a visual reference to the curves of a woman, in my opinion.
That’s another thing: rather obviously, I am giving my opinion about a matter of art. Challenging it as though I was making assertions of fact is either disengenuous or a sign that you completely missed the point.
Also, the fishtail butt looks crude and clumsy and impractical to me — you got a thing for mermaids or something?
It looks lovely to me, and I have some experience swinging swords. Perhaps you do, too. But, if you did, you’d understand that the guard and pommel of a sword – even a ceremonial one – don’t hit you when you swing it. You don’t use that part of the handle to stop the swing; it’s a counter-weight. If you want to look at a crazy guard, take a look at a renaissance Swiss two-handed sword or a basket-hilted rapier (both wickedly effective weapons).
kestrel@#5:
Oh my isn’t that gorgeous. Talk about a strong, clear vision of what he wanted to do!
Yeah! That’s a great way of putting it. You can tell someone who decides “I’m gonna do this bunch of hard things and I’m going to do them really well because I’m sure it’ll look great.”
Charly@#4:
I quit!
Nah. It’s just years of hard work showing itself.
When I was a kid, looking at the Sadamune katana they used to have on display at the Victoria And Albert museum, I remember thinking “I want to make something like that.” Hahahahahahah. Well, if you’ve got to be emotionally crushed, may as well get crushed by the best. [I believe the brits returned that sword to the Japanese government; it’s never displayed anymore]
oh: guesswork –
I suspect that the eroded plywood look was achieved by taking some eroded plywood and making a silicone mold from it, then cleaning the plywood out and pouring molten carving wax into the cavity. That would have been, presumably, carved and polished to give the rest of the shapes while retaining the textured areas. After that, it appears to have been investment cast with shakudo (gold/copper alloy) or silver/copper bronze (hard to tell; Ford Hallam could look at that and probably rattle off the blend) then shaped, fitted, polished, color toned, and gilded.
I’ve posted here about Ford Hallam, but if you haven’t watched his video Yugen it’ll give you an idea of the kind of effort that goes into fittings like Johnsson’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkhWh19fTG4
Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden@#12:
“A sword so lovely, it’d be a pleasure to be cut down by it.”
Weapons are an important symbol of class status since humans invented class. Decorating them appears to have evolved right along with them. There’s a lot of important art that has been lavished on weapons. I wonder whether religion or warfare has inspired more art? [and by “warfare” I mean something more vague like “the manifest trappings of power” so John Morales doesn’t nitpick]
johnson catman@#13:
Very off topic for this post, but what happened to the post about the x-86 backdoor? I did not get a chance to watch it yesterday, but I had the intention to come back and watch it when I had more time. And now, it isn’t here. Was Marcus taken into the back room and “educated” about posting such stuff by people in dark suits and sunglasses?
It’s a topic that has been woven into a number of my postings. But there’s this:
https://proxy.freethought.online/stderr/2018/10/06/hacking-and-propaganda/
I’m not sure if I’ve ever come straight out and just focused on that one topic. But it is a very serious thing and people who dismiss it [i.e.: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/29/intel_visa_hack/ ] don’t seem to understand the role that software flaws play in unlocking the underlying control mechanisms of backdoors. A lot of people dismiss them with reasoning like “you have to already have administrative access to the system…” but they don’t realize that that’s generally easy and what we’re talking about is a generalized capability for accessing things like encryption keys out of memory, untraceably. The fact that these things are there is a concern, but the fact that they got built into every mainline CPU intel sold for decades is the tip of a great big iceberg.
Was Marcus taken into the back room and “educated” about posting such stuff by people in dark suits and sunglasses?
I used to work with/for those guys on and off; they don’t do it that way. They’re actually pretty cool about it unless you do too much damage and then they do you like they did Julian Assange.
lochaber@#11:
My aesthetics tend to favor natural/organic forms/patterns and wear through use. It may be a pretty simple preference, and not terribly refined or whatever, but I’m not much of a fan of decoration for decoration’s sake on my own stuff, and it’s what I like, and I’m okay with that.
I bounce around. My aesthetics are that the Japanese are right to store the finest swords in shirasaya so as not to distract from them. This is a different vision of creativity – it’s opulent but I don’t think it’s weak (go try and snap a chunk of shakudo with a hand tool and get back to me) and if you defactor the ornamentation, a gladius is always the epitome of mechanized slaughter and you simply are not allowed to ever imply a gladius is impractical.
The carvings into the blade are a curvy form of a fuller like the “bo hi” groove on a katana. If I understand the things right, increasing the surface area of a piece of the blade (through the curve) and burnishing it (through the carving) is not just ornamentation, it increases the stiffness of the blade, as well as lightening it.
re Marcus @20: Am I mistaken that you had a post up yesterday or the day before with a 46 minute video where someone lectured about this? I was sure that it was on your blog that I saw it, but if not, I apologize.
.
Also, the last line was meant as a joke.
johnson catman@#23:
Am I mistaken that you had a post up yesterday or the day before with a 46 minute video where someone lectured about this? I was sure that it was on your blog that I saw it, but if not, I apologize.
Oh, sorry. I referenced that over at Mano’s. I’ve referenced it here, as well, but only obliquely.
I highly recommend that everyone watch this video, and think about what it means while they enjoy the really cool details of how the backdoor was implemented. Then, if that doesn’t make things start to click in your mind, study the Intel Management Engine (IME) and its capabilities, in the light of the fact that embedded backdoors have been found in Intel products.
There is no way that the stuff he is describing in this video is an accident. The odds of something like that being a bug are zero. Nobody implements a complicated “mistake” like this in a processor designed primarily for use in portable and set-top devices and goes to these lengths to hide it, unless they’ve been doing a bunch of stuff like this.
This is what the US govenment is afraid Huawei is building into their 5G chipsets. At this point, my feeling is: suck it, NSA-boy, see how you like them apples.
PS – his tenacity and creativity in digging through all this stuff is laudable. I wonder if he got some of his information from a little bird, though.
PPS – Google has taken this seriously enough that they’ve been trying to construct a boot sequence controller that does not allow Intel to initialize anything that’s not on a list of things they want initialized (i.e.: it must be known, first) – for some reason, Intel has been kind of resisting that; making it a bit harder. Meanwhile, Tim Apple just smiles. Not because Apple’s got great security either any more – but they must have their own accomodation with the police state.
re Marcus @24: Thank you! I had associated it with you, but did not remember that it wasn’t on your blog and instead in a comment on Mano’s blog. Cognitive decline in action.
I think the light the gold casts on that Damascus in the fourth photo is divine. So is the Damasus. It has a very organic, sensual swirl. Almost feminine – which is an excellent adjective to describe a style of curves.
They all look deadly to me, but the level of craftsmanship and design is what makes them desirable.