Unbridled

Written rearing.

The horse rears, and the rearing is written. Mane, muscle and hooves are letters from the Arabic phrase “my freedom is to be what they don’t want me to be”. The animal refuses the bridle because the sentence does.

Of the three designs in Drop 001, this was the hardest to write. A rearing horse is all tension and motion, and zoomorphic calligraphy demands the words stay legible inside that motion. Weeks of drafts, one unbroken horse.

Why a horse.

Freedom is the thread, and no freedom is stolen more completely than a childhood taken by war. A child in a conflict zone loses more than safety. They lose school, play, friends and the simple right to be small in a calm world.

The unbridled horse stands for every child’s right to simply be a child. Unsaddled, unbroken, answering to no one about what it is allowed to become.

A childhood should not be a battlefield.

More children are growing up inside conflict today than at any point since the Second World War.

Each of these numbers is a childhood interrupted: a school that closed, a home left behind at night, a friend who did not come back. Children make up a third of the world’s population and far more than their share of its displaced.

Every Unbridled piece supports children living through war and crisis, helping fund the safety, schooling and care that give a childhood back its shape.