How did this start?

“I have always loved gold, stories, metalwork, unusual items and hidden meanings. 

As a teenager I bought a gold plating kit and built a business creating gold plated gadgets, such as iPhones, iPads and Macbooks, selling them to customers including royalty, presidents and luxury retailers across the world.

Meanwhile, as a 90’s kid, I spent a lot of time playing Call of Duty, ‘grinding’ in-game challenges to unlock 24ct. gold gun skins, that were so highly coveted, to flash in game.

Combine this with a fascination with the world, people, economies and unusual places, I would find my myself reading about conflict zones, looking into their histories, causations and impacts. I wanted something to tell these stories, so I started buying up deactivated firearms from the areas I’d read about, as something I could show people and keep telling the story of where it came from and why.

When you hold something like this in your hands, your imagination runs wild with the things it’s seen, what it’s done, where it’s been. There’s very, very little else in the world that can emote such feelings and the vast majority of us will never encounter such an experience.

I thought this was epic.

So I started getting more exotic with what I could find. From AK47’s from Russia, to RPG’s captured in terrorist strongholds in Afghanistan, to Grenade launchers held by African Warlords. All of course, deactivated, taken off the market and embellished in 24ct. gold.

I then chose my art style; combining my favourite characters, wielding exotic ‘golden guns’ that so many of us pursued in video games. But whilst they appear to be wielding a weapon at first sight… look a little closer and another message is told.

Through this I aim to deliver a fun, playful, but contradictory juxtaposition of love and war. Whilst delivering a thought provoking message with my art, that brings a sense of reality and awareness of war, to those that may not have ever experienced it before.”

All items are EU and UK legally certified deactivated. Proofed at the UK proofing houses, with certificate.