Light Speed

Here is my latest offering, thanks to a rainy afternoon and my wife having her friend with a 2 year old daughter round for the kids to have a Sunday afternoon 'play date' as they seem to call it, I got a bit of time to myself in the shed :) and what's even better is they sent me out coffee and pink wafer biscuits as I worked!!
 This design has been around in sketch form for a while, since I was doing lots of pointy ended forms a few months back.
 The design is based on the idea of a particle travelling through space at the speed of light (maybe I've watched too many physics documentaries!!) The form being the particle itself, rounded at the front in the direction of travel and coming to a soft point at the other end. The base is to represent the space its flying through and the finial represents space/time being warped by the particle as it flies along at the cosmic speed limit. A better explanation might be that of the shock wave that can be seen infront of a plane about to break the sound barrier only in this case with space and time rather than air(OK my physics may be a bit shaky.....).
 The base is made from an offcut of Elm, ebonised and then 'metalised' by rubbing a tiny amount of gold paint over it which gives a nice,dirty bronze like appearance . The finial is also a small piece of surplus Elm that has been steamed for about half an hour and then set in shape before finishing. A few coats of satin lacquer provide the finish.