Last week I started on a fairly big piece of Mountain Karee, which will now take some time to dry before I can do some decorative work and finish the piece. It also gives me some time to develop some ideas on what decoration I will do. I still have some of the Mountain Karee (Bergkaree in Afrikaans) left and this week I chose a healthy piece and made an endgrain hollow form. Two ago years while in Paris, I got hold of a book of the well known French potter, Robert Deblander, who managed a good balance between form and graphic decoration. I still want to explore some of his ideas on graphic decoration, using the techniques I learned from Nick Agar during my course with him but this week I am using one of his ideas on shape for a hollow form. As woodturners we can learn a lot about shape, looking at shapes coming from pottery, ceramics and glass.
My photograpy is still not great, this picture taken with my Iphone, but in the new year I will work on this. The sapwood of the Bergkaree is very light but with some interesting small burls which should give it some charater. The top and bottom where the heartwood is visible should give a nice deep red finish once it is dry.
The piece is 24cm high by 23cm diameter and currently weighs 1,5kg. I will also now leave it to dry and then decide whether I will do any decoration or just simply sand and finish. Hollowing was done with my Woodcut tools but for the last section the 5/8 shaft of the Woodcut was not sufficient so I had to use my 3/4 inch John Jordan hollowing. Wall thickness is about 5 to 6 mm
