June 23 — last

I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to portray today’s topic, last, but yesterday I had a brainstorm. We got an antique iron shoe last as “etcetera” with one of the lots we purchased at our first auction in England (the auction house has a nasty habit of lumping a lot of worthless junk with quality pieces they know someone will buy, just to move the crap out of their warehouse). It’s a bit rusty and a lot dirty, so I thought I’d hang on to it as a project on which to practice my cast iron restoration skills (carefully researched on the internet, of course). Eventually it will have a new life as a doorstop–assuming I can figure out which way to orient it to avoid broken toes. If restoration goes according to plan, I’ll apply my perfected techniques to some iron pieces I intentionally bought, like a finial off an old fencepost (soon to become a bookend) and a Victorian boot scraper (soon to become, well, a boot scraper).

June Photo a Day hosted by Chantelle at Fat Mum Slim