Mount’s Bay Stool, 2022
Sub fossilised oak (C14 date 4400 to 4700 before present) | 48 x 38 x 38cm
Oak from a tree that died two and a half thousand years before the start of the Common Era. The tree lived in Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, when the bay was wooded and far from the sea. It was pickled in peat, buried under sand, and submerged by the rising Atlantic Ocean for four and a half thousand years, until uncovered by a winter storm in 2020.
Echoing the tradition of placing seats by bodies of water as spaces for contemplation, the sculpture was first shown a stone’s throw from Mount’s Bay and its submerged forest, its form determined by the volume of workable material.