I wasn't terribly happy with the brass candlestick I've had since 2015 for my altar table - it was adequate but not terribly period and the more I updated other things in my display, the more it seemed lacking. Hunting around online and rummaging through op-shops were equally fruitless - it looked like unless I wanted to shell out a phenomenal amount of money for the Real Thing, I was going to have to make it myself...
Casting brass is a bit beyond me - I could carve a wax image and then shell out another phenomenal amount of money for someone to cast it for me, or I could use the grey between the ears and do a bit of research and see what other forms of candlestick were around in the place and period I'm reenacting, that might be a bit more within my means and capabilities.
It turns out that a ceramic one, Persian-style, would fit the bill; again, I don't have a potter's wheel or kiln but I *have* worked with clay (a bit) and figured that as the piece only needs to hold an unlit candle and get looked at (and look reasonably legitimate...) I should be able to manage. I have a bee in my bonnet about making replicas - to me, they need to be exact copies of the original and I know I'm not going to get it exact and it'll bug me forever, so I prefer taking a couple of examples and making something in-between. I ended up choosing two fairly basic and simple candlesticks as models; one from 12th-13th century Persian which had interesting (and decidedly do-able) crenelations around the top, and one from Iran (same period) which had a much simpler top (where the candle goes).
I've worked with air-dry clay before - it's an interesting mixture of papier-mâché, clay, and some kind of polymer that (like the Force) binds it all together. I find that it's a lot harder that real clay to join bits together (scoring and wetting it don't really do much) and the surface tends to dry out and crack a little within half an hour so Much Planning must occur before the packet is even opened; however, the end result is pretty sturdy and so it's fit for this purpose.
Having worked out roughly how big I wanted the candlestick, I rolled out the air-dry clay on a board and started stamping out the circles in the crenelation before I noticed that the clay I was stamping out was sticking to the board... and so, it turned out, was the rest of it >.< Scrape up clay into lump, say rude words, massage clay, spread out paper, roll clay out again and do the stamping; I figured if it stuck to the paper then I could peel/wash it off later. It actually worked quite well and the paper enabled me to use sticky tape when I shaped the flat bit into a cylinder for the body of the candlestick 😊 I cut out a bit of paper roughly the size of the opening of the cylinder and used it as a template to make the top, and made a ring to hold the candle, and let everything dry.
It shrunk a bit, of course... which I hadn't taken into consideration, and the 'join' at the back now didn't... and the damn top was too big... but fortunately the clay is easy to sand so I reshaped things and tidied up the crenelations (which had little paper fibres or something hairy sticking out of them 😬) and fit it together and glued it with Shoe Glue. It did look a little dog's-breakfast-y so I rummaged around in the workshop and found a venerable half-used bag of Spak-filla (plastering compound) and did some serious patching, and in the end I was pretty happy that it looked acceptable. The original pieces I was using as models had a bit of engraving on them and I cowardly decided to go with the easier version: just a couple of rings around the body and a bit of accentuation around the crenelations - I have a tiny screwdriver sharpened up as a chisel for this sort of thing 😉.
I let it dry overnight (I need to mention here that I live in Australia and at the moment our days are getting up to 34º-37º and overnight it's about 28º - that's about 82ºF for my American friends) and then the next day set about 'glazing' it.
The glaze is acrylic varnish tinted with acrylic paint, and I've used the method before reasonably successfully on other projects; the varnish is milky in its liquid form (dries clear) and that makes getting the colour right a bit difficult - at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it LOL; it bugs me that I didn't get it quite blue enough, but the turquoise is quite acceptable, really... I painted a layer on, then poured (gently, carefully) - and then spent the next 10 minutes wiping drips off the bottom and patching bits that were still white (although you do see that in extant pieces).
(The piece is sitting on the varnish can, on a cake-cooling rack, above an aluminium baking dish, on a very dilapidated but much-loved Lazy Susan (turntable).
Clean up, wash brushes, let dry, time for coffee and lunch.
While I was waiting for it to dry I realised that the candle I'd used with the old brass candlestick was too thick to use with this one, so set about remaking it - made a mould by rolling up a sheet of plastic (it had been an old folder cover) and wrapping it in tape so it didn't unroll, ran a wick (cotton cord) through it (anchored at the top with blu-tack, covered in more tape, just in case) and a bamboo skewer at the base, and then suspended it over the sink by every damn S-hook I could find in the kitchen so I could pour the melted wax into it; meanwhile I pulled the old candle apart and melted it on the stove - it was quite easy to pull apart because back in 2015 I'd had the good sense to make a Very Period dipped candle 😉.
The candle worked out okay (a bit of trimming and tidying up here and there) although I royally cocked up the base measurement and had to shave it severely before it'd fit in the candlestick... but in the end I'm pretty happy with the result and it looks a lot better than the old brass one 😊.
(At the time of the photo the candle was not exactly straight, thanks to poor workmanship and summer heat, but I've fixed that... I think...).
No comments:
Post a Comment