The Serpent & The Stag
A 14-inch Wild Fallow Deer Drum on a Mulberry Hoop with an Antler Handle
Birthed at Samhain, at the turning of the year, when the living remember their dead and the darkness begins its long embrace of the land thsi ancient conversation between the serpent and the stag emerged
One who sheds its skin, another who casts his antlers. Both carrying within their bodies the memory of what has been, and the possibility of what is yet to come.
Birthed from the hide of a wild fallow deer of the Welsh borderlands, stretched upon a 14-inch mulberry hoop, this drum carries an antler handle and the winding form of a British adder.
The serpent moves around the edge of the drum, slipping across the folds of hide, appearing and disappearing, as though moving between worlds.
The adder belongs to the earth, to stone warmed by sunlight, to the hidden places beneath root and leaf. As the year darkens, it retreats into the earth, waiting for the warmth that will call it forth again.
And the deer knows something of these rhythms too. Of growth and shedding, of the changing light, of the seasons written into flesh and bone.
At Samhain, when we turn towards our ancestors, I am reminded that ancestry reaches far beyond our human bloodlines. Into the deer, the serpent, the trees and the soil. Into all those lives whose matter has become our own.
This drum holds something of that remembering. Of the lives that came before us, the skins we have shed, and the ancient, unbroken conversation between life, death and becoming. And all belonging to the same living earth.
Exchange is £365 plus p&p of kerbside collection if you are local To Ludlow .
The Serpent & The Stag
A 14-inch Wild Fallow Deer Drum on a Mulberry Hoop with an Antler Handle
Birthed at Samhain, at the turning of the year, when the living remember their dead and the darkness begins its long embrace of the land thsi ancient conversation between the serpent and the stag emerged
One who sheds its skin, another who casts his antlers. Both carrying within their bodies the memory of what has been, and the possibility of what is yet to come.
Birthed from the hide of a wild fallow deer of the Welsh borderlands, stretched upon a 14-inch mulberry hoop, this drum carries an antler handle and the winding form of a British adder.
The serpent moves around the edge of the drum, slipping across the folds of hide, appearing and disappearing, as though moving between worlds.
The adder belongs to the earth, to stone warmed by sunlight, to the hidden places beneath root and leaf. As the year darkens, it retreats into the earth, waiting for the warmth that will call it forth again.
And the deer knows something of these rhythms too. Of growth and shedding, of the changing light, of the seasons written into flesh and bone.
At Samhain, when we turn towards our ancestors, I am reminded that ancestry reaches far beyond our human bloodlines. Into the deer, the serpent, the trees and the soil. Into all those lives whose matter has become our own.
This drum holds something of that remembering. Of the lives that came before us, the skins we have shed, and the ancient, unbroken conversation between life, death and becoming. And all belonging to the same living earth.
Exchange is £365 plus p&p of kerbside collection if you are local To Ludlow .
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