Anti-Submarine Mines for the Home

Marti Karmin, MarineMine, Elliptical Fireplace

On this Remembrance Day, I thought I would show you have some of the artifacts of weaponry and warfare can actually be re-imagined as something useful, and dare I say, beautiful. Estonian artist Mati Karmin and his company MarineMine have taken salvaged cases of WWII era Russian anti-submarine mines and created everything from functioning fireplaces, to tables, armchairs, beds to sculptural pieces like his 'toy' baby carriage (complete with grenades instead of rattles).

Marti Karmin, MarineMine, Spherical Fireplace 02

These sorts of mines were in fact very common. I know from doing marine fieldwork offshore western Canada that we in this country dumped our own on the seabed (at a time when people never imagined that future generations would do anything at those sorts of depths and the scientists and even fishers to whom these are now a real hazard). The ones used in these sculptures and furniture were not deployed at sea, but stored in warehouses in full working order, on an island in Gulf of Finland, for decades. The Soviet army finally removed and destroyed the explosives in the early 1990s, leaving the amazing vessels behind. Karmin has seen the beauty in the cases and had the imagination to put them to better use.

Marti Karmin, MarineMine, Chandelier

His chandelier involves replacing the detonators with Plexiglas mock-ups, serving as light bulbs.

He's even used some of the hemispherical cases to build an aquarium.

(via Twisted Sifter)

Marti Karmin, MarineMine, Davenport Table

Marti Karmin, MarineMine, Baby Carriage

Marti Karmin, MarineMine, Baby Carriage

Juxtaposition & Craftivism

german panther, 2007, Luftballon/Luft/Kleber (balloon/air/glou), 960 x370 x 300cm

A balloon tank by German-based Dutch artist Hans Hemmert (via Adapt)


Pink M.24 Chaffee
A tank wrapped in pink

Danish artist Marianne Jorgensen stitched together a pink cozy, knit and crocheted in a collection of three thousand 15 cm x 15 cm squares for a WWII tank as a protest against the involvement of Denmark (UK and US) in the war in Iraq, by volunteers in Europe and the US in 2006.


Barb Hunt
antipersonnel, 1998 and ongoing
approximately 50 knitted sculptures
Collection of the artist
©2001 Barb Hunt

Canadian artist Barb Hunt knit replicas of antipersonnel land mines in various shades of pink wool, inspired by protests againts land mines. While Marianne Jorgensen cites how knitting and pinkness allude to coziness and home, the antipathy of war, Barb Hunt relates knitting to caring for the body, bandages and hand-knit socks for soldiers abroad and thus to caring, recooperating and protection.


Barb Hunt
antipersonnel - detail landscape

I find Hunt's collection very moving; to ponder the sheer inventiveness of human evil in creating such an array of civilian-killing devices along with the irony of justaposition with the cuddly medium and feminine* pink colour.

The wikipedia entry for Craftivism includes instructions for knitting your own "purse grenade" from Political protest turns to the radical art of knitting by Charlotte Higgins published by The Guardian, Monday 31 January 2005.

*At least according to current colour-biases.