Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise"; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it. So it was almost a year ago now my wife and I were browsing through a second hand shop, come junk yard. It was in a small town called Bridport, West Dorset. There resting against a wall outside were a pair of rustic cast iron bench ends. We understand they had come from the platform of a country railway station, at least that’s how they were sold to us.
My wife saw the potential in these heavy rusty looking bits of metal. Here first words to me were “you could make a chair with those and carve something on it”. I have to admit I wasn’t convinced, and it seemed like a lot of hard work for me. We agreed if they were cheap enough we would make the purchase. The shop owner was happy to take £10 for the pair. We thought this pretty good value and after handing over the money we placed them in the boot of the car for the journey home.
The bench ends have been sitting in my garden ever since, subject to wind, rain, snow and the occasional ray of sunshine. To be fair to Judith she hasn’t nagged me too much, to do something with them. But this week, with the sun coming through on Bank Holiday Monday, I decided I should bite the bullet and get on with the job in question.
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| THE WOOD IS TREATED WITH TEAK OIL, TO PROTECT IT FROM THE OUTSIDE ELEMENTS |
We decided on the word Serendipity for the carving, because we came across it recently and we liked the sound of it. The word Serendipity has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate. But it was a nice word to carve and here is how it came together. The wood I used is called sapele, it is a large tree native to tropical Africa.
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| THE COMPLETED CARVING BEFORE FINISHING |
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| ALL FINISHED |
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