The National Ornamental Metal Museum announces a solo exhibition of knifemaker, sculptor and artist Virgil England’s work to run from June 8 to Sept. 2, 2012. England has dedicated his exhibition to Daryl Meier and Bob and Jenny Willis.
England, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, is a visionary in several respects. As a talented artisan and smith he creates unique knives and edged weapons which, at the same time, are perfectly interwoven with figurative allusions and details. All his works are part of the environment of a fantastic place, which he calls “Het Lands,” at sometime in the universe where an archaic civilization is confronted with the apparition of the “Seth Daemon.” But also actual antique eras inspired him to these fantastic ideas and to exactly these pieces of work. In 2004, he designed the “Empire Sword,” a series of Yatagan swords with reference to the powerful ancient Iranian kingdom of the Achaemenidic kings Cyrus and Darius, approximately 2,600 years ago. Since the 1970s, England worked as a knifemaker and started to increase his interest in intricate, multipartite projects of art. However, he never abandoned the knife blade.
