Gallery 2

The box is completely engraved.  This box has a Philadelphia theme and includes the sun motif, a view of the city and docks, sailing ships and the initials of the owner.

I don't keep many pieces.  Most are sold right after a competition and sent away to their new owners.  My wife makes me keep a few pieces which I now use in my work teaching, "History through the Arts" at Pricketts Fort in West Virginia.

This is a 17th Century Pirate flask.  The spout and mechanism are made from cow horn and brass pins.  I had researched a man who was captured by Pirates, rescued by Henry Morgan and given a job as a sniper by Morgan himself.  Morgan was reportedly the first man to use snipers with rifled guns.  He would place them in the rigging of the ship much as the British Navy and Marine Corps did. 

I wanted to creat a flask that could be worked with one hand.  The knob on the spout turns to open the charger and can be closed.  It doesn't need a wooden plug to seal it off.  I put myself into the mind of a man who would be shooting from a platform several feet above a deck.  The less movement and things to lose the better.

A list of battles won.

The ship on which he traveled and on the back side of the flask, a partial map of the Spanish Main.