photography by Lorella Zanetti
THE BARBS: In 1873, at a county fair in DeKalb, Illinois, Henry M. Rose exhibited his new fencing idea: a wooden rail with sharp spikes to "prick" any animal that tried to breach it. But 60-year-old Joseph Glidden, a farmer, thought he could improve on the concept by attaching little spikes along a wire. According to legend, Glidden cranked out his wire barbs with a jury-rigged coffee-bean grinder. However he did it, the innovation worked, bringing him (eventually) a small fortune and providing homesteaders with a cheap, easy-to-install alternative to post-and-rail fences and sod-and-stone walls. Unfortunately, it also slashed horses and cattle, leaving livestock with wounds often infected by screwworm. Regligious groups were revolted by the carnage and called barbed wire "the Devil's rope." Trail drivers and free-range grazers also preotested, saying the new fences would end their livelihoods. They were right. Barbed wire helped close the open range and stop the great cattle drives.
THE WIRE: At each of Canada's three barbed-wire manufacturers - Tree Island Steel in Vancouver, Frost Fence and Wire Products in Hamilton, Ont., and Phoenix Fence in Edmonton - machines the size of three fridges are fed through the top and sides with 12- and 14-gauge, galvanized-steel wire drawn from one-tonne spools. The finished product, spit out at a rate of 150 feet per minute, is chopped off in quarter-mile lengths, which typically retail for $43. The most popular design is Canadian Standard, a twisted 12-and-a half-gauge, double-strand cable (with barbs at 15-cm intervals) that provides better than 900 pounds of breaking strength. Most of our wire goes to the Prairie provinces, but some is sent to the U.S.; however, we import four times more from the U.S. than they buy from us. Still, our manufacturers make enough to circle the equator twice, which works out to 80,000 kilometers of barbed wire and an industry worth $8.5 million annually.
POINTS TAKEN: There are now well over 2,000 variations on the approximately 570 types of barbed wire that have been patented to date. Variations include Scutt's Crimp, Hunt's Spur Wheel, Ford's Kink and Coil and Kittleson's Half Hitch Double Strand. Still, try as they might, no one has significantly improved on the original - Joseph Glidden's two-strand, two-point barb called Glidden's Winner. In fact, more than 90% of all patented barbed wires have proven worthless in actual use.
TWIST AND SHOUT: In the early 1900s, phone service was primarily for city folk. Farmers, however, realized that because of the often great distances between one another, they needed phones, too. And so, being an inventive bunch, they took a long, hard look at the livestock fencing that linked their lands together - and discovered that barbed wire could indeed be used to conduct a barely acceptable telephone conversation. Before long, thousands of rural telephone co-ops had sprouted up and, by 1920, these farmers were the best-networked, most telephone-savvy population in North America.
THIS MORTAL COIL: The prickly stuff has also proven effective against people. Warwire - also known as entanglement wire, anti-intrusion wire, prison wire and concentration camp wire - was first used in combat by the French military in the 1880s. At first, regular livestock wire was employed, but in 1902, arms experts began designing more vicious varieties. Concertina wire, razor wire and long-blade barbed tape (known together in the trade as "the nasty stuff") are among the most malefic and intimidating. Basically large, taut springs studded with razor blades, these pernicious fences flay anyone unfortunate enough to come in contact with them.
THE KINKS: As a visual metaphor for pain, it's hard to top barbed wire, which can make even the most banal objet d'art seem deliciously Dada or can turn a very merry image ironically joyless. (Think of Amnesty International's brave little candle.) Of course, true artistic geniuses can find ways to strip barbed wire of its irony. Take, for example, Iowa sculptor Bernie Jestrabek-Hart's thorny yet practically huggable Mare and foal, and Bernie, the Large Mouth Bass. With or without irony, barbed wire is a powerful sexual fetish for those who seek pleasure in pain. It's also a nifty fashion accessory for high schoolers. For the "Got Blood?" crowd, freaky mall merchant Spencer Gifts sells a "radical to the max" barbed-wire necklace for $14.99. And what Goth wedding would be complete without black-leather roses with barbed-wire stems? (at www.rosesofleather.com.)