THE SLAVE AND THE IRON LACE by Margaret Danner.

The craving of Samuel Rouse for clearance to create was surely as hot as the iron that buffeted him.
His passion for freedom so strong that it molded the smoldering fashion he laced, for how else could a slave plot or counterplot such incomparable shapes, form or reform, for house after house
the intricate Chatilion Patio pattern, the delicate Rose and Lyre, the Debutante Settee the complex but famous Grape; frame the classic vein in an iron bench?

How could he turn an iron Venetian urn, wind the Grape Vine chain the trunk of a pine with a Round-the-Tree-settee, mold a Floating Flower tray, a French chair, create all this in such exquisite fairyland taste, that he’d be freed and his skill would still resound a hundred years after?

And I wonder if I, with this thick asbestos glove of an attitude, could lace forge, and bend this ton of lead-chained spleen surrounding me?
Could I manifest and sustain it into a new free-form screen of, not necessarily love, but (at the very least, for all concerned) grace…

Reference:
Margaret Danner