-Elephant with Howdah c. 1912s - 1922s

This cast iron elephant was made by the A.C. Williams Company. It's a warm, metallic brown all over, and the whole thing seems to be about process. You can see the marks of the mold, the way the metal was poured and cooled. It’s rough, like an animal's skin, and the details of the howdah are worn, almost blurry, but still defined enough to suggest the richness of its patterns. There's a feeling of weight to it, which makes you wonder about the relationship between the elephant’s massive size and the more delicate, crafted object. Look at the texture around the ears - the way it subtly shifts, almost like folds of fabric, even though it’s cold, hard metal. It's both animal and manufactured, and this duality gives it a strange, endearing presence. Makes me think a little of Picasso's bronze sculptures. They share that same quality of capturing something primal in an industrial material.