Still Lifes with Hammer and Tongs

Ice Hammer and Ice Tongs Under the Sink #1 (11"X14", Oil on Canvas, $325)

Ice Hammer and Ice Tongs by the Sink #2 (14"X11", Oil on Canvas, $325)

"Rusty Hand Hammer by the Sink" (16"X12", Oil on Canvas, $450)

"Ice Hammer and Ice Tongs by the Sink" (16"X12", Oil on Canvas, $400)

This is a suite of paintings much like the four pepper paintings in the earlier post. I like doing series of paintings, since they allow me to take an idea further than I otherwise might. By playing with different compositions I'm able to bring different elements out of the subject matter.

I came across these tools in the back of a building that was being re-habbed in the North End. They were to be thrown out with the rest of the junk, or taken by the scrap-metal man. I knew that I had to have them the moment I saw them. I could feel the history pouring off them.

These tools were used by the ice men that served the North End from the 1800's through the end of World War II. Big horse-drawn wagons would stop at each house and the ice man would hop out, carrying a hand hammer and a pair of ice tongs - this hand hammer and these very ice tongs. After using the hammer with its chisel-like claw to knock, and then rough out a big cube of ice from the slab in back, he would grab it with the tongs, sling it over his shoulder and haul it into the apartments of his customers and load it into their ice-boxes. What stories these tools could tell of life in the North End!

I truly enjoyed capturing the curves and weight of these now-rusty iron implements. I'll use them again in a painting some day, with a strong male figure and a horse, to recall the days of the ice wagon and the hard-working ice man.