Thoughts & Images
In Finland there’s a certain tradition at New Year. People melt horse shoe shaped pieces of tin in a metal ladle, then quickly pour the molten tin into a bucket full of cold water. This makes the molten tin solidify in a random shape. When done at midnight, when the year changes, you can then view the shadow of the new tin piece against the wall in candle light and predict the upcoming year’s fortune from what you can see in the shadow. Since my very first artist book, I have often used this principle to create free-form, organic tin pieces for my books. And I’m at it again… I even happened to have a few “horse shoes” left from last New Year’s. Over the years I have also experimented by casting, but there’s really nothing as exciting as just pouring freely onto a wooden surface and very quickly manipulating the shape before it cools down. I like the immediacy of it, the surprise, the organic feel – as opposed to more controlled casting. Often I need to melt a piece several times over before I get something I’m happy with, and sometimes it turns out even better than I could have planned. (Jun09)
i did this as a child (40 years ago) and would love to introduce custom to my own children. where can i purchase a kit–any ideas? thanks for your help!
joanie goldberg said this on December 10th, 2011 at 2:19 am
It really is such a lovely custom, our kids enjoy it so much too. At the end of the year I know most groceries stores in Finland tend to sell the kits, but not sure where you could get them elsewhere… When I haven’t had the horse shoes or the standard ladle available while living abroad, I’ve just bought tin solder wire from a hardware store and a metal ladle with as thin a base as could find. You can then just cut a piece of the tin wire, fold it onto the ladle, melt it and drop into a bucket of cold water – works the same. I hope you’ll give it a go!
Mia said this on December 12th, 2011 at 9:43 am
We have a large bag of melted tin from previous New Years. Is it possible to find a mold for horseshoes and reuse the tin?
Jim Kurtti said this on January 8th, 2012 at 6:55 pm
Yes, certainly, you don’t necessarily even need to make the previous year’s tin into horse shoes again – just melt the old year’s tin the next year (many recycle like that). Year by year the amount will get smaller, as bits tend to crumble off every time the tin is dropped into the bucket of cold water.
Mia said this on January 16th, 2012 at 7:54 pm
These horse shoe shaped pieces of “tin” are nowadays mostly lead (about 90%). So please be careful and do not let your children handle these items unsupervised.
Jenni said this on February 5th, 2012 at 8:20 am
The horse shoes probably are ok for the New Year’s game (the pieces generally get many sharp edges too when they form quickly in water so luckily not too nice for kids to handle either), but if anyone’s interested in using tin in artwork, you can google “high purity tin” or 98% tin, I know GreatArt in UK sells such “pure tin” in sheets.
Mia said this on February 23rd, 2012 at 1:34 pm