Hubcap art?

The Telegraph reports that an artist is using - of all things! - discarded hubcaps to create his works.

Ptolemy Elrington, 43, works full time in his studio crafting shiny dolphins, dogs and dragons from all grades of hub cap - from BMW and Mercedes to Ford and Volvo.




He fixes the caps together using wire salvaged from scrap yards and cuts them with a craft knife and hacksaw.

Using free materials means the Brighton-based artist only charges customers for labour - at about £75 [about US $120] per day.

His most expensive creation was a dragon that used 200 hub caps, measured 10m long, and took over a month to build. It sold for £3,000 [about US $4,760].




. . .

He said: "I like to work with reclaimed materials to show that what is one person's junk is another man's treasure.

. . .

Ptolemy has about 500 hub caps in stock and uses between ten and 200 caps per model.




He said: "I never buy the hubcaps - I either find them at the roadside or am passed them by family and friends in the UK.

"Even the wire I use to fix the hubcaps together is salvaged from scrap yards."

There's more at the link. A gallery of photographs of Mr. Elrington's work may be found here.

I've never thought of old, discarded hubcaps as particularly artistic, but I think Mr. Elrington might change my mind about that!

Peter