Haitian Metal Art: Hanging Wall Decor Artwork for Home, Kitchen, Garden or Gift
What is Haitian Metal Art?
Haitian metal art is an amazing style of ethnic art and wall decor. Each piece has intricate details in design, both in the metal shaping and in the painting. Vivid, bright colors of the tropics are used to create bold, beautiful, attention-grabbing pieces of art to adorn a wall. Most come with hangers on the back for easy mounting.
Nature, Plant and Animal Metal Wall Hangings
Many designs are available in this crude yet delicate art form at Breeze On In Sales. For nature lovers there are: birds, butterflies, dolphins, fish, lizards, turtles, palm trees, seahorses, seashells, frogs, dragonflies, parrots and many others.
Automobile, Houses and Astrological Artwork
Other designs like houses, buses, lighthouses, suns and the moon with the sun are also available.
The buses are astounding with detailed painting and deco patterns pounded into the metal. Featuring a short bus with three passengers and a driver, the bus comes in various tropical colors with fine detailing. Atop the bus is a large wicker basket full of fruit. The passengers are sitting in the bus with their backs against the bus railing. Clothes, fruit and even the wheel spokes of the bus are finely hand painted.
Small, Medium and Large Size Wall Decor
Many of the designs of Haitian metal art come in different sizes – small, medium or large. Other pieces are only available in one size. Butterflies, frogs and crabs come in metal art sets or singles, and each is painted in bright spectacular colors with attention to even the slightest details.
Key Hook Home Decor
Key hooks are metal art work sculptures. The fish, house and turtle key hooks are just a few of the key hook sculptures available. The turtle is portrayed walking through grass. The fish are available in different color schemes, each tropical. Flamingos and dragonflies are also among the available styles. The key hooks do not come with a hanger on the back, but with a hole on each side of the bottom to nail through.
For a unique beautiful ethnic piece of artwork to decorate a wall, you can not go wrong with choosing a piece of Haitian metal art. Available in appealing designs, Breeze On In Sales strives to bring you a wide variety of high quality metal artwork to choose from.
History and Craft of Haitian Metal Artwork
The practice of recycling 55 gallon oil drums into delicate works of art was first implemented in Haiti in the early 1950’s by blacksmith Georges Liautaud. In 1944 DeWitt Clinton Peters opened Le Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince and began encouraging native artists and craftsmen to create unique forms of art. Georges Liautaud did exactly that. Being very creative, he made his first metal canvas and forged out the first piece of Haitian Metal Art.
The process Liautaud used to produce a metal canvas from a recycled oil drum is still the same process used today in Croix-des-Bouquets. The oil drums arrive at Port au Prince where they are purchased and then transported by handcart or on the top of taxis to Croix-des-Bouquets, the center of the Haitian metalwork. There the tops and bottoms are removed from the drums and placed inside the drum cylinders with sugar cane or dried banana. They are then set on fire. The fire removes paint and residue from the drums. Once cooled down, the drums are cut from top to bottom. Climbing inside the drums, the craftsman pushes them open and apart by applying brute force using arms and legs to push. When open enough to climb outside of the drum, the metal is pounded into a flattened metal canvas with a hammer..
Designs are drawn onto the metal with chalk to begin with. After the design is drawn, the artist uses hammer, chisel, nail and various crude tools to cut the design and shape it. A steel brush is used to clean and smooth the artwork before it is painted. No two pieces are identical, each piece is unique, handcrafted and hand painted. Each piece of Haitian metal art is signed and finished with a rust preventive solution and then polished.