For comparison, traditional anvils can range in height from about four inches to 16 inches, according to OldWorldAnvils.com.
Anvils were once common on farms.
Prior to welders and other pieces of technology, farmers used anvils and other hand tools to make or repair items.
“My grandfather was a farmer, and he sharpened plow points on our anvil (which is dated 1917). He’d hammer edges down, sharpen things and bend out bent metal,” Chip Barkman from Texarkana, Texas, told Farm Collector in June 2005.
The giant anvil housed at the BC Farm Museum came from the mind of an artist.
Maskull Lasserre, a Calgary-born artist work has been displayed at museums and art galleries internationally, created the piece, which he called Acoustic Anvil: A Small Weight to Forge the Sea, in 2018 for Vancouver Biennale, a bi-annual public art exhibition.
He used steel, paint, solar panels and electronic components to create the hollow anvil.
And one feature connects the anvil to the ocean.
“Cut through the anvil's outwardly solid core is a violin’s f-hole which transforms this familiar object into something more ambiguous,” Lasserre’s website says. “It becomes a tool-turned-instrument where the rolling sound of the sea distinctively resonates from its solid mass.”
The BC Farm Museum will open for the season on April 1.
Top photo: Maskull Lasserre website