Mushroom - March 2021
This mushroom came from the discarded blank for a bowl. My bother was a wood turner and left behind lots of material that never made the finish line. In this case I had the bright idea to slice the blank in cross sections, set about it the wrong way, chipped a lump out of the front of the blank and broke the cast aluminium back to my chop saw. After pausing on that near death experience, i had to both make the most of the damage to the blank and to build a new back for my chop saw.
One of my brother’s specialities was natural edged turned mushrooms. Taking that for inspiration, I cleaned off the rough blank, to give it the shape you see, bringing out the grain. The spirals - two twists - were an experiment in carving into the edge of a blank. This is more or less into in the end grain and so not a neat or easy approach to take. I got what you see.
Then came the stem. I like working with birch ply and laminated this with a curving lean to add some dynamism to the spiralling cap. Really happy with the result, even allowing for the chunk I took out of the edge.
Alas, I’m guessing, but I think the cap is ash. The stem birch ply. The finish is shellac, to catch the light as it bends around the curves and shows both the natural and ply grains.
