insulated

and this is the crazy collection of my wife's grandfather who is 95 this year. these are old electrical power pole insulators that live full time at the family cabin. most of them are glass but he does have this very large ceramic example as well.


why is this interesting you might ask? maybe it's not, but when i first saw these i wasn't sure exactly what they were. some had been turned into candle votives and i dismissed them. but after a second and third look i began to realize this wasn't their original purpose. so i got to talking to grandpa about them. how did you come by them?


apparently back when they began to replace these (with polymer materials) the utility guys would drop these from the poles as they went and just left them. so if you took a walk you might find a pile of these sitting at the bottom of a string of power poles.


there is something really beautiful about them apart from the function they used to perform. like art deco depression-era glass and ceramic. these really pretty lines and curves.


and a reminder too that a long time ago people used to make things by hand. there were once great glass and ceramic factories in this country producing these things on order for the various utilities across the country. linking art and commerce on the very earliest representation of the grid.