I don’t know when it started. Someone reached out on their way past, gave a wing a pat, and somehow it became a thing everyone does. Kids. Regulars. People who’ve never bought a thing in their life but always say hello to the birds. You can see exactly where it happens — the bronze has gone soft and green everywhere the weather touched it, except down their backs and along the beaks, where a thousand hands have kept the brass glowing warm and gold.
They’re a matched pair — identical, two tall cranes standing just over five feet, heads raised like they’ve heard something interesting across the room. They’re made the old way, brass and bronze together: the brighter brass catching the light at the beak and the high points, the darker bronze going that deep even green over the rest.
They spent years out in a garden — a sheltered patio — and you can read every one of those seasons in the patina. That soft, even green is the honest gift of real time outdoors: sun and damp and frost doing their slow work, a little at a time. It’s the kind of surface you simply can’t rush or fake.
There’s a reason cranes so often come as a pair. In both Chinese and Japanese tradition they stand for long life and good fortune — and because real cranes are said to mate for life, a pair has always meant faithfulness, two together for the long haul. These two have kept each other company a good while already.
I’d love to see them go somewhere with room to stand sentinel: flanking a gate, watching over a pond, guarding a doorway. They weigh about a hundred pounds apiece, so whoever takes them is making a commitment — but a pair like this is the kind of thing a garden keeps for fifty years.
They’re in the shop if you’d like to come say hello before they find their garden. Message or call.
Leslie
778-708-0454
The Pound & the Provenance
7791 Steveston Highway
(northwest corner of No. 3 Road and Steveston Highway)
Richmond, BC, Canada
Please Note: I am not an appraiser, a silversmith or a gemologist. I am an antiques dealer. A generalist with a love for things with a bit of age. I had a stroke, four years ago, and AI is helping me to do better than I would have. Nothing here is false, everything here is true. I hope you enjoy it and please leave a message.
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