Virgil England’s fantasy-land

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Virgil England’s life-size dragon skeleton installation in Alaska’s Chugach National Forest. A lot of readers were curious about the elaborate back-story that England has created for his fantasy armory work, so Virgil himself pointed me to Debra McKinney’s article from the Anchorage Daily News of last May that explains more:

This is an ancient world where armorers are the masters of applied physics, where dragons and hellhounds lurk and where he with the biggest bad-ass weapon wins. England spends as many as 70 hours a week immersed in this alternate universe, creating tools of an ancient culture that never existed — a time and place where reptilianlike bad guys drop in from a distant galaxy, where ritual assassination is sanctioned by the temple, where if someone steals your goat, dueling daggers settle the matter. The Het Lands, he calls it. He knows this place in such intricate detail he can talk of its history, social order and warrior ways until your ears leap from your head and take off running.

Virgil uses only techniques and materials that correspond to 10th-century “Earth” technology in crafting his pieces. There’s more info at his personal website.