Wish I Had Wings

14-inch Fallow Deer Hide Drum

I am fortunate to live in a place where the skies belong to the birds. Hawks, red kites and buzzards circle above the land, riding the rising thermals, dancing effortlessly between earth and sky. I can spend hours watching them, following their great sweeping circles, wondering what it must feel like to surrender so completely to the air. Sometimes, when the world is particularly still, I can even hear the sound of their wings moving through the air as they pass overhead.

Oh, how I wish I had wings.

An eagle was not who I expected to emerge upon this drum. But then, more often than not, what I want and what the drum wants are two entirely different things, and as always, the drum wins.

And so an eagle came.

This beautiful 14-inch drum has been birthed from the hide of a fallow deer, her skin still carrying the faint dappled markings of the coat she once wore. I love that these markings remain, little whispers of the animal she was, a reminder that beneath the painting, beneath the beauty of what has been created, there was once a living, breathing being who moved through the woodland.

Upon her skin I have painted an eagle, wings outstretched, held between the rhythms of sun and moon. At the base rests a triple moon, a symbol of the ever-turning cycles of life, death and renewal, while above her sits the sun. Tiny golden stars are scattered across the face of the drum, like pathways through the night sky, little constellations of possibility.

On the back, I have woven a wing using banana fibre and threads of nettle, bringing together plant and animal in a small act of remembering how deeply our lives are entwined. Hanging beneath is a single buzzard feather, gathered during one of my wanderings upon the land. A little gift from the birds who have so often stopped me in my tracks and reminded me to look up.

There is something about birds that has always stirred a deep longing in me. Perhaps it is their freedom, their ability to move between earth and sky, or the way they seem to belong so completely to the world without ever needing to hold on to it.

Birds have long been woven into the mythology and folklore of these lands, regarded as messengers between worlds, carriers of omens, hope and sometimes the souls of the departed. In many traditions their flight has been associated with joy, freedom and the extraordinary beauty of being alive.

I love the thought that their dancing through the sky might be a celebration in itself. Not a journey towards something, not a search for meaning, but simply the sheer joy of being a bird, of having wings, of feeling the wind beneath them.

Perhaps that is what this drum came to remind me.

That there is joy in being alive, in the simple act of belonging to this wild and wonderful world, even when our own feet remain firmly upon the earth.

This is a one-of-a-kind, hand-birthed drum, made slowly and with deep reverence for the animal, plants and land from which she came.

A drum of earth and sky, of wildness, freedom and the beautiful longing to fly.

She is £345 plus p&p or kerbside collection from Ludlow. All my drums come with a 1 years guarantee and care instructions.