The impressive knife sculpture, which took 110 hours of work, has been up for auction since yesterday at an online event on aukro.cz, with all the collected proceeds going to the paediatric trauma unit of the Brno Children’s Hospital. Photo credit: University Hospital Brno
Brno, June 23 (BD) – Wings made of 1,200 knife blades, flames made of steel, and a base made of 440 knife handles. The sculpture has been transformed into a beautiful design object, with the protective wings bending over the flames. It had been up for auction online on Aukro.cz since yesterday, Wednesday 22 June, with all proceeds from the week-long event going to the paediatric trauma unit of Brno Children’s Hospital.
The idea to collect knives that are no longer in use and create a work of art out of them was conceived by knife grinder Marek Neuman from the company Knives from Vostra. The collection ran from March 2020 throughout the coronavirus pandemic. “It was really hard to get so many knives, we collected for more than two years, and although we wanted to have even more knives, and create a bigger sculpture, we are happy that it was finally created in this form. I believe that our activity will not go to waste, and we will raise as much money as possible by auctioning, because helping children is a must,” said Neuman. He added that the starting price of the ‘sharp’ knife sculpture was set at CZK 45,000.
“It’s very nice that the knifemakers reminded us that even when the waves of the pandemic were raging, children were hurting all the time,” said Ladislav Plánka, Head of the Department of Paediatric Surgery, Orthopaedics and Traumatology at the Brno University Hospital. “With the exception of perhaps the first wave in the spring of 2020, when people were locked in their homes out of fear, no period was different in terms of the number and spectrum of child injuries treated in our outpatient clinics and operating rooms. Even though we went with our colleagues to vaccinate at the BVV until August 2021, it was still necessary to treat children’s injuries.”
It was not easy to create a sculpture weighing 37 kilograms, 100 centimetres high and with a wingspan of 90 centimetres. Sculptor Pavel Bortník spent 110 hours of hard forging work on it. “The hardest part was to make basically the same wings, shape them and hit their dimensions on the number of donated and usable knives. I also had to forge the hollow flames and work the base, which is even double-cast. Add to that hours of sanding and hand-polishing the entire sculpture,” said Bortnik, who is an accomplished chef as well as a blacksmith.
The knife donors include the well-known chef Pavel Sapík, and Dellinger, a leading Czech knife manufacturer, which donated its first ever knife to the auction. Most of the knives were sent to the collection by people from Moravia and South Bohemia.
