Skis for a Gnome

A little while back we made these skis, poles, and snowboard for a photographer in Minnesota. He does a winter series with his daughter who dresses up like a traditional Norwegian gnome. The photos are absolutely stunning we were thrilled to be able to be apart of it. You can see the photos at http://www.perbreiehagen.com This site is definitely worth checking out!

Everything was made to look really old. The metal was rusted, copper was oxidized to turn a slight green, leather was roughed up, and the wood was scraped and gouged.

The snowboard was a real fun part of the project. Part of it was that we were making something that never existed: An ancient snowboard. Unlike ski history, snowboard history is very recent. So the goal was to make a snowboard that looked like it was hundreds of years old but resembled a modern snowboard so it would be recognizable instantly. We used a modern shape with an all wood board. We really tried to emphasized the grain. The way we would do the bindings came fairly quickly and intuitively. Looking back at our own dutch heritage (Terpstra - yes very dutch!) we quickly decided to replicate the bindings of traditional wooden dutch skates. I don't think anything else would have worked as perfectly.

Be sure to check out http://www.perbreiehagen.com/