Liss Ard House | Roaringwater Journal

There’s a magic to the working of metal: you can pick this up when you are doing it, or when you are watching others do it. It could be the arcane transformation of rough nuggets of ore, first into liquid and then into beautiful solid objects that inspires that impression – or perhaps it’s because the senses are battered by the fierce heat, the molten rivulets, the streaming sparks, the incessant hammering, the sheer excitement… It’s no wonder that our ancestors embraced the emerging technologies hundreds of generation ago, and created spectacular objects which, today, we place in our museums and venerate.

Umha Aois are artists and sculptors working as ‘experimental archaeologists’ who have been in Skibbereen this week as part of the Skibberen Arts Festival. They use Bronze Age metal working techniques to produce replicas of ancient tools, weapons and musical instruments and also contemporary art objects. We went to their workshops set up in the grounds of Liss Ard House and met Holger Lönze – a locally based sculptor – James Hayes from Bray and their colleagues who are researching and using stone and clay moulds, ‘lost wax’ processes and charcoal pit-furnaces.

Robert holding a recently cast bronze bell, while Finola tries out an adze

It’s very appropriate that we should be looking at Bronze Age metalwork in our own corner of West Cork as we are in the shadow of Mount Gabriel, site of substantial copper mine workings probably dating from some three and a half thousand years ago. A number of Bronze Age mines have been found on the Mizen Peninsula: it must have been a significant local activity and source of trade. It has of course continued almost up to the present day; our own townland of Cappaghglass saw considerable copper extraction during the nineteenth century.

Copper Mountain – on Mount Gabriel can be found the sites of 32 separate workings dating from 1700 – 1400 BC, but there is no evidence of smelting or metalworking in the same vicinity: perhaps the ‘magic’ of the process required it to be carried out in more secret places?

Back to the Umha Aois project (it’s pronounced oowah eesh and means Bronze Age): we saw pieces in various stages of production, including axe heads, adze heads and spear heads, cast from stone moulds. They are elegant objects, especially when they have been polished to a gleaming finish.

Bronze axe head, showing the mould used to cast it

The group was using pit furnaces which they had constructed on site. These consisted of basin shaped depressions in the ground lined with clay, and pipework of clay running from two sets of bellows. The clay pits were filled with charcoal and fired to a high temperature to convert the ore in the crucibles to a molten state.

Top – the principle components of a Bronze Age pit furnace; below left – crucible being heated; below right – the bellows in action

In another shelter we were also shown the ‘lost wax’ process: small objects were shaped in wax and then encased in clay. The wax was melted, leaving a mould in the clay cavity which was then filled with molten metal. Once hardened, the clay moulds are broken apart; the copper or bronze objects are then finished and polished. Here is a BBC video that demonstrates these techniques. There are incredible examples of this type of worked metal in the National Museum in Dublin, including some in gold – thousands of years old and yet so elegant and sophisticated.

Clay moulds used in the ‘lost wax’ process

Holger has also made a Bronze Age musical instrument, which he demonstrated for us. The pattern is based on ‘trumpets’ which have been found in Europe, the finest being the Loughnashade trumpet, discovered during drainage works at the site of a former lake in County Armagh. Holger’s trumpet is a bronze cast: some finds have been made from curved and rivetted sheets of bronze. Here is a link to a recording of the sound made by a similar reconstructed instrument.

Holger Lönze conjuring up ancient music!

By exploring techniques, lifestyles and behaviour of our forebears through practical application, experimental archaeologists such as Umha Aois help us to understand that people who lived in the Bronze Age were not intellectually ‘primitive’ as was once thought; they have passed down to us their own aesthetic appreciation of art, music and their highly developed knowledge of sciences that enabled them to construct the complex megalithic monuments – and enigmatic Rock Art – which are yet beyond our own understanding.

Experimental archaeology in the walled garden at Liss Ard

Our ancestors left behind rugged stone monuments, landscapes which have shaped the pattern of our countryside, and sublimely beautiful objects: magic to our eyes and senses.

This Bronze Age gold disc – now in the National Museum, Dublin – was found at Sparrograda, Ballydehob:

Iris Sky Garden (photo by Liss Ard Estate)

Irish Sky Garden (photo by Liss Ard Estate)

Just outside Skibbereen – a stone’s throw from Nead an Iolair – is a work by Californian artist James Turrell: the Irish Sky Garden. It’s a piece of landscaping which explores light by both night and day: an observatory. The structure is an artificial crater with a stone plinth at its centre from which two participants can view the sky framed by the perimeter of the oval enclosure.

Sky view from the plinth

In Turrell’s own words describing the experience “…The most important thing is that inside turns into outside and the other way around, in the sense that relationships between the Irish landscape and sky change…”

James Turrell was born in 1943 – in Pasadena. His father was an aeronautical engineer and James obtained his pilot’s license when he was just 16. He has been exploring landscapes by flying over them ever since. He studied perceptual psychology, mathematics, geology and astronomy. He enrolled in the graduate Studio Art program at the University of California, Irvine, in 1966, when he began to explore light projections. At the same time Turrell, a Quaker and conscientious objector, was jailed for a year for encouraging young men to avoid the Vietnam War draft.

All the artist’s work is focussed on light and space. In an interview of 2002 for the International Sculptor Center he explained:

“…I was raised a Quaker, and now I have come back to being active. I’m not sure whether that has impacted my art-making, because my work is not about specific issues—perhaps being a Quaker influences how I live my life and what I value. People tend to relate any work in light to the spiritual. I don’t think this is actually correct, yet, in terms of our lives, we greet light in three major ways that aren’t necessarily partitioned. There is a psychological aspect, a physical aspect, and a spiritual aspect. In terms of the physical, we drink light as Vitamin D, so it’s literally a food that has a major effect on our well-being. The strong psychological effects of light can readily be felt in particular spaces…”

Some examples of Turrell’s work in light and space:

Dhatu, Ganzfeld 2009

Bridget’s Bardot, Wolfsburg 2008

Milk Run 1996

Twilight Epiphany, Houston 2012

Stone Sky 2005

Finola’s post on Liss Ard Gardens gives a good background to the setting of this artwork: a Georgian house (now also an excellent hotel and restaurant – check for opening hours) surrounded by formal and informal landscaping and lakes interlaced by tracks and footpaths which offer ever changing vistas. When she wrote the post a year ago she probably had no idea that it would be the setting for our marriage – which took place this week!

Liss Ard House (photo by Peter Clarke)

The name Liss Ard comes from Lios Ard, ‘lios’ being an Iron Age ring fort and ‘ard’ meaning high – hence high fort. The ring fort is still extant as a magical space – a grass circle surrounded by trees; there is also, under it, a souterain – a system of low tunnels and chambers which are often found in association with structures of this type. When we discovered that Liss Ard was licenced to hold weddings – and that licence covered all of the grounds – we jumped at the opportunity to ‘tie the knot’ within an Irish archaeological site…

James Turrell’s concept drawing for the Liss Ard project, showing Ring Fort and Sky Garden

Our ceremony was simple – a humanist celebrant and just a few guests who have been important to our lives in Ireland. After the official bits we wandered down to the Sky Garden and admired Turrell’s vision from the altar-like plinth. We were blessed with blue sky and sunshine.

Wedding Day… (photo by Peter Clarke)

In 1979 James Turrell acquired a vast natural cinder crater located outside Flagstaff, Arizona. This – the Roden Crater – is possibly his best known work, and it is still in progress. He is turning this volcanic crater into a massive naked-eye observatory, designed specifically for the viewing of celestial phenomena. There are other ‘sky’ works in a number of countries: a ‘Turrell Tour‘ has been mapped out which takes in an least 23 of them.

Roden Crater, Arizona

Skyspace, Scotland

Within-Without, Canberra 2010

Celestial Vault, Stroom, Holland 1996

It’s a big leap – from Liss Ard to Arizona and beyond. The full concept of the Sky Garden has never been completed: two more installations were planned. But how exciting that here in West Cork we have a stunning example of the work of this world-renowned artist.