Chapter 2
Looking Back at Fabricating History
IN THIS CHAPTER
Hammering metal into headdresses
Excavating the elements
Blacksmithing — it’s not just for horseshoes
Hypothesizing about hardware
Perusing metalworking processes
… and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
— BOOK OF ISAIAH
The Soviet Union once presented the United Nations with a bronze statue of a man pounding on a sword with a hammer. At its base reads a snippet of the preceding quote, signifying our desire as human beings to put an end to war forever. It was a grand gesture and remains one of the more treasured items in the United Nations’ art collection. The year was 1959.
But the artist who constructed it, Ukrainian-born Yevgeny Vuchetich, knew a heck of a lot more about shaping metal than he did about human nature. Just three years later and a few days after I was born, Soviet leadership ...
Get Fabricating For Dummies now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
