These are two metal swords I made for a party that my then girlfriend and I hosted to celebrate our approximately shared birthdays. In 2003 everyone was in the grip of Lord of the Rings fever (this generation's Star Wars - yeah, whatever) and we'd decided to have a theme party. She was Arwen, and I was her Aragorn. Ok, ok, give me a break. I was twenty-three, and in love.

Each weapon is fashioned from whatever bits I happened to have lying around in the studio, mostly offcuts and a few scavenged parts. The Pommels are made from big round-headed coach bolts, and were perfect for the job, while the hand guards are old bicycle brake calipers. This is hard to spot if you don't look too closely.

The smaller sword was made to a more feminine size, and far more elegantly. It was meant to be a gift to C, but she never got round to getting it. The evening ended badly, with C too ill to attend her own birthday, the venue hijacked by a bunch of drumming hippies, and myself stumbling home even more depressed and wretched than I usually am on birthdays, drunk and lonely in the small hours of the morning, whacking the heads off rosebushes with eight kilos of sharp steel. Oh well, win some lose some.