Once & Future Box, 1998

Box with Eastern repoussé lid. The bottom features the same design as the top but in ornamental line chasing. The chased lettering on the inside is a quote by Joseph Campbell: "The material of myth is the material of life."

As a longtime devotee of the study of comparative mythology, I was struck by the reflective nature of this idea. We often think of myths outside our own belief systems as fanciful, and myths that are part of our own belief systems as being of a higher order. The concept that they are the archetypal, dreamscape metaphors of our own human struggles speaks to a universal way of seeing patterns across cultures.

Being an absolute nerd for all things to do with Arthurian myths, I named the box after one of my two favorite versions of the tale, The Once and Future King by T. H. White (my other favorite is The Mists of Avalon). My very practical reason was that I kept changing my mind, pushing up the relief and countersinking the Eastern repoussé top, defying the laws of physics and dangerously thinning out the metal. I even made and then remade it into a box. It had been a box, and I knew it would be a box again one day, though across the 3 years I worked on it, it seemed forever in progress.