sfriedberg
Diamond
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2010
- Location
- Oregon, USA
I've lived a couple hours away from the Maryhill Museum for about 25 years, but never took the time to go look at it. The history of the place involves a pretty wacky bunch of characters, including Queen Marie of Romania and an exotic dancer (no, not a stripper) and Sam Hill, a road-building tycoon of the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900's. The building itself is sort of an overgrown Italian palazzzo (Wikipedia says "Beaux Arts"), was intended to be one of Hill's residences, and is named for his wife. It sits on top of the north bluff of the Columbia River Gorge, right across from the truck stop of Biggs Junction, and is so perfectly out of place in this location as to be almost surreal.
Among the various collections were a couple of things I thought might be interesting to other PM Forums members. There were a couple of pieces of outdoor metalwork sculpture, and I regret taking photos of just one. Made from welded "weathering" steel (likely Cor-Ten), my first reaction on seeing this flower/anemone/whatever was "He must have one Hell of a welding positioner". The leaves/petals/fronds are made from 1/2", 3/8", and 1/4" plate and the artist clearly had some sort of a press to put compound curves in them and flange the holes. The dark brown area near the tip of the bud/whatever is roughly 5 feet off the ground, so there's more to the foundation than just a shallow concrete slab. I didn't see any visible welds, except for the stem/stalk and the base.
On the bottom floor of the museum, there's a collection of about 40 chess sets, ranging from standard retail Stauton sets to limited-edition (even unique) artwork sets. There's one from SKF, the bearing people, made from gilded and silvered ball and roller bearings. I imagine those are thrust washers at the base of the pawn, knight and bishop pieces. SKF obviously was never in the business of selling chess sets, so the museum believes this was a presentation set. How many were made is not known to the museum.
Among the various collections were a couple of things I thought might be interesting to other PM Forums members. There were a couple of pieces of outdoor metalwork sculpture, and I regret taking photos of just one. Made from welded "weathering" steel (likely Cor-Ten), my first reaction on seeing this flower/anemone/whatever was "He must have one Hell of a welding positioner". The leaves/petals/fronds are made from 1/2", 3/8", and 1/4" plate and the artist clearly had some sort of a press to put compound curves in them and flange the holes. The dark brown area near the tip of the bud/whatever is roughly 5 feet off the ground, so there's more to the foundation than just a shallow concrete slab. I didn't see any visible welds, except for the stem/stalk and the base.
On the bottom floor of the museum, there's a collection of about 40 chess sets, ranging from standard retail Stauton sets to limited-edition (even unique) artwork sets. There's one from SKF, the bearing people, made from gilded and silvered ball and roller bearings. I imagine those are thrust washers at the base of the pawn, knight and bishop pieces. SKF obviously was never in the business of selling chess sets, so the museum believes this was a presentation set. How many were made is not known to the museum.