What are our hopes for the future of the grinding industry, and which direction does the Swarfhorse timeline take most immediately?

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 Like some strange archeological excavation, a figure emerges from the swarf. Resembling the casts of Pompeii, are we witnessing the scree-m of someone once buried alive by volcanic ash. Or are we mistaken – is it the scree-m of a new born - is this foetal form a harbinger of a potential rebirth?

 The sculpture is carved from a block of swarf (the ultrafine metal grindings which are created when grinding blades on a traditional grindstone) , which took around 12 months to be formed.

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 Prior to the sinking of the foundations for The Electric Works, an archeological dig was carried out by ARCUS,  industrial archaeologists from The University of Sheffield. They unearthed an unusual, twisted, fragment of metal, which had obviously been forged, but its identity was a mystery. Metallurgists established that the metal was Nimonic. ARCUS took the fragment to be inspected by Ken Hawley, at The Hawley Collection.  Ken recalled that in the early 1940’s, when he worked for his father, at Pond Hill, adjacent to where the excavation had taken place, that representatives from Rolls Royce, were at reknowned cutlers Joseph Rodgers, the firm who occupied the site before The Electric Works. He recalled that they were there to oversee the prototyping of the first Jet Engine blades, carried out by Rodgers’ forgers and grinders. An example of the unacknowledged role which Sheffield’s grinders have played in the creation of state of the art, ‘Cutting Edge’ technology.