A full-scale reproduction of the legendary Trojan Horse is underway in the sculpture department at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, with about 30 students and woodworking professionals collaborating on the project. So far, they’ve assembled more than 100 pieces of Eastern White Pine to construct the head and neck of the horse, and plan to finish the rest of the body based on historical accounts of what the horse looked like.
A collaboration between professors Rick and Laura Brown who also own the nonprofit educational Handshouse Studio) and the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C., the Trojan Horse Project began in the fall of 2015 and is expected to be under construction for the remainder of the year. The museum hopes to exhibit the horse outside its new location in 2018.
For anyone who could use a quick brush on their Ancient Greek history, the Trojan Horse was a huge wooden horse that hid soldiers inside. The Greeks built it after a fruitless 10-year siege against the city of Troy, and left the horse behind, pretending to sail away. The Trojans pulled the horse inside their city gates, and the forces were unleashed, destroying the city and ending the war.
“We have to infer things from the information we have,” says Phoebe Scott, a sculpture major at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, in an interview with the Patriot Ledger. “To understand how large the horse was, we had to figure out how wide the fence they got the horse through was. So, to do that, we had to look at where the poles of the fence were.”
“We feel that the horse should be beautiful. It was inspiring to the Trojans, they believed that the gods had created it. It’s not something scary, a siege machine. We feel it has to be very beautiful, very sculptural.”
As soon as photos of the finished horse are released, we’ll provide an update on this post. We’re excited to see how it comes together!
