Master at Ypres 2016 – Jacob Haggarty

Published on 08.11.16

We were all delighted when Jacob’s panel design was selected from hundred’s on entries from all over the globe, Jacob was only student selected to  be one of the Masters as Ypres 2016. Jacob: “For my panel design, I wanted to try to do something different. In 1914 the first bombs fell on Ypres, and

We were all delighted when Jacob’s panel design was selected from hundred’s on entries from all over the globe, Jacob was only student selected to  be one of the Masters as Ypres 2016.

Jacob: “For my panel design, I wanted to try to do something different. In 1914 the first bombs fell on Ypres, and the city had put in place plans to rebuild from as early as 1915. Today the city of Ypres, or Leper as it’s known in Flemish, has been carefully reconstructed to the way it was pre-war. This amazing recovery is an achievement that I wanted to honour in the design for the panel, which depicts a birds-eye-view image of Ypres in 1918, constructed from multiple plates of flat steel section. The intention behind this is that the plates of steel are representative of the bricks used to reconstruct the remains of the city, and carry strong connotations of rebuilding and recovering when coupled with the aerial image of Ypres 1918, which was almost completely leveled by bombing and skirmishing. In this sense, the rebuilding process is made the feature of the design, but the sombre imagery of the damage done by the war is paid respect to as well.

The image will be put into the steel plates by using various chisel marks, ball punches, and heavy to light fullering to represent the scarred terrain, craters, and churned earth of war-time Ypres. The same design will be featured on both sides, meaning that two copies of each plate will need to be made. Each brick will be made of 40mm or 30mm by 10mm flat stock, and will have a 10mm hole drilled through the centre, which is then counter sunk to approximately 15mm. This allows for a rivet to sit flush with the surface of the plate and so can be disguised effectively as the detail of the map section the plate corresponds to.
The plates are connected to the frame by lengths of 200mm round or octagonal section with slit and drifted 10mm holes at regular intervals, to allow for riveting the plate on.”
Jacob-2.jpg
At the event Jacob worked with a team of five other blacksmiths from across the world to make his panel in two days , his team was truly international and it included :

Jeronimo Chavira – Mexico
Daniel Freyne – UK
Mick Smith – Canada
Marc Van Damme – Belgium
Raf Nulens – Belgium

Wow ! what an achievement for Jacob to be Ypres 2016 Master so early on in his career , the finished panel looks great – well done Master Haggarty!

Del