Samurai Hornets

Project Owner: Dick Kelly
Type of Wood: Cherry, Maple, Basswood
Finish: polychrome - acrylic wash
Dimensions: 22" tall

Description:

Hello fellow carvers. I’m a long-time student of Chris’s, even though I just recently started taking these on-line classes. My experience goes back close to ten years with a series of workshops at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine. So I was a carver before I started turning wood. But my current inclination is to combine the two. And now that I’m in my mid-seventies, my hand strength isn’t what it once was, so I supplement my classic European-style carving by using a small router for some of the more energetic bosting in portions of my work. What started as a necessity has become a preferred method of design as I came to appreciate the stepped-level, architectural look the routing gives my carvings. This piece, Samurai Hornets, came about because I became aware that my relatively small work was Literally being “overlooked” in the gallery where I showed. It needed more presence. A specially designed base, integrated with the turned vessel was the answer. The resulting piece is about twenty two inches tall. This piece is made to be displayed on a pedestal and viewed from 360 degrees. The two panels of the base, each carved with the same hornet motif, are canted out seven degrees from the bottom, so the negative space changes as the viewer moves around it. The visible inside surfaces of the panels is also finished with a simple carved texture. The carved hornet finial was done with palm gouges. It got to be “Samurai Hornets” because about the time I finished it, I saw a museum exhibition of Japanese Samurai armor with all its elegantly decorated overlapping articulated plates. The carved and textured parts of the hornet reminded me of the armor. So this got to be my Samurai Hornets piece.