Cast Iron Understore Black Box Edition

This rarest of Black Box Limited Edition Ghosts is only available through the Understore. There are just six in total and only one is currently for sale others will appear here over the coming months or years. This is the 16th Black Box Ghost.

In recent times the edition of six Ghosts were buried throughout the Covid pandemic beneath an old holly tree. While humankind experienced a year of unprecedented change and impact on so many levels the interred Ghosts underwent dramatic change too. A stiff reminder that very little stays the same, flux is constant. The six Ghosts were wrapped in black cotton before entering the earth, the cotton has rotted and the iron rusted. In places the oxidisation has fused cotton fibres into the body of the Ghost and the smooth surface has become pitted and richly coloured, the eyes have shallowed with encrustation. Each Ghost bears its own unique scars of the year and these lie on top of the marks of previous years. This very small edition is engraved on the base with an edition number the dates of the time spent below ground.

The story is that the six iron Ghosts were first bought to York in the eighteenth century by a renowned collector of ephemera Mme. Doreen Rust. Their origin is unknown although many have speculated that they were cast in the “steel” city of Sheffield and might have been made as amulets. After being separated for centuries the six “ Doreen Rust “ Ghosts have been reunited by the Ghost Merchants.

Black Box Edition Original York ghosts are sold in a specially commissioned black box with an insert card detailing the edition number and batch with a date and initials of the Merchant who has signed off the ghost