Cupping stones - bowls for salt or special objects

 

Over the last couple of days I have been 'cupping' some stones collected from the cove stone beach on past trips. Cupping simple refers to carving shallow cup or bowl shaped indents-depressions in stone. In the late neolithic and early bronze age people carved cup and ring decoration into some standing and reclining stones. There is no clear story as to why this was done or how they were used.

As you can see from the opening photo I thought such cups in smaller sea tumbled stones could be used to hold salt; or they could hold special personal or sacred items such as rings or gem stones.

I used a diamond grinding disk in my side grinder to carve the stones. Bit of a tricky task as the grinder vibrates quite a lot, the side grinder is quite heavy with the battery attached and the work is very much hands on - not for the faint hearted. Needless to say I was gloved, masked and goggled up!!!! A few progress-process photos follow.

A few photos of finished cupped stones.

A few of the stones were given a coat of vegetable oil to bring out the colour.

Final photo is another of the striped stone that will probably make it's way home with us.

Finished pierced jewellery

 

Between things today I managed to get out into the Wee Workshop to saw the final two pendants I had scribed, drilled and brought over here from Maleny to saw - see opening photo.

This means I will have at least 7 pendants and 3 pairs of earrings for the Wee Pop Up Art Show at the Little Red Cottage in Maleny on 28-29 November. The five pendants and three pairs of earrings in the following photos will of course require further grinding, polishing and jump rings and wires when I get back to Maleny.

Some process photos of the sawing of today's two pendants follow. You can see the fine granules of metal cut out by the saw.

I snapped two fine saw blades in cutting these two pendants - every now and then the saw blade just jams in the cutting process - a delicate process.

Too gorgeous not to share

 

Dawn on Monday morning put on a magic light show - deep colours and rainbows as wide and as far as we could see. The opening photo shows how the wind's interaction with the cloud was also creating shapes, layers and curtains.

In no particular order some of Monday's images follow.

Even the sheep at the cove headland took on a slight glow.

The rainbow that appeared to the west on our way home started soft, intensified and then by the time we got back to the cottage it had all but gone.

Nature's temporary art show!!!!

Two tasks completed

 

Not a lot of photos in the blog post but they do show that I have completed two tasks: a watercolour commission; and the last couple of comfort stones.

The opening photo shows the completed watercolour - though it is not the greatest photo. The following photos show my workplace on the window ledge with light coming in from the west.

I completed the last two comfort stones which can be seen in the photo below.

I now have twelve stones to sell and gift. They have now been packed up for the trip home.

Before heading back to our Maleny home I will do a bit more pierced jewellery work. Couple more pendants and another set of earrings from the melted and rolled metal I brought over with me. If time permits I might make a few pairs of earrings from silver-plate and some pierced jewellery out of pure silver sheet I also brought over with me.!!!

Wee whimsical hoosies

 

As you can see from the opening photo I have cut a couple of wee whimsical hoosie pendants out of melted and rolled salvaged silver metal. I like the negative space form of the hoosies - particularly the one where I used holes in the metal created as part of pouring the molten metal and then rolling the metal bar. The top hole suggests smoke from the chimney and the bottom hole maybe a garden plot or pond???

Photos of the individual pendants follow - they are 4.5-5cm long and about 2cm wide.

Some process-progress photos of the piercing cutting work follow.

Cutting the hoosie negative space resulted in two rough hoosies - these have become earrings.

All the pieces still need to be given final filing, grinding and polishing - that will be done in the Maleny workshop. I'm hoping to have my priced jewellery for sale at our Pop Up Art Show at the Little Red Cottage in Maleny at the end of November.

Worth revisiting

 

On most of our stays at the cottage Fiona and I take a trip to Orkney - it is one of those places that simply speak to us. On a few occasions we have revisited Gurness - an iron age broch village. We visited Gurness again yesterday and were fortunate to get great sunshine between rain showers. The broch and surrounding buildings sat on the very edge of the coast as you can see from the opening photo.

It has been estimated that the broch was built somewhere between 500 and 200 BC. Information says the broth was about 10m in height and probably took 20 people over 6 months to build by hand.

As you can see from the following photos the village was an amazing solid complex that would have supported a sizeable number of people.

Further photos show some of the homely and complex aspects of the broch including the double walls - there were steps and passage ways between the walls. Most inner walls and storage spaces are stone.

It is just amazing what the builders achieved such a long time ago. The last photo is from the Gurness shoreline looking across to another broch village on the island of Rassay.