kareina

I have been enjoying watching

fjorlief make her beautiful rag doll, Nandina, and all of the lovely accessories. But it wasn't till I saw her post about making a tiny basket that I wanted to play, and wondered how it would go to carve a tiny soapstone pot for Nandina.

So tonight, sometime after midnight, instead of going to bed, I opened the box of soapstone scraps from various quarries, looking for one that wasn't too big, but was still big enough. I finally selected a scrap that comes from Solem Quarry, which is a bit south of Trondheim, and was used in the 1800's for quarrying stone to restore Nidaros Cathedral.

That piece was just over 1.5 cm thick, ~2 cm wide and ~3.5 long. it had one already perfectly flat surface, from having been previously cut to obtain the chip that I have analysed for my PhD research. So I cut off one pointy end, and started using a flat file to remove the edges and wind up with something kinda like a cylinder. Then I used a round file to start putting groves on one end, so I could make feet, so that the pot can stand in the coals.

It went surprisingly fast to get the legs separated from one another, and then I used a half-round file to define the curve of the bottom of the pot. Finally I carved the inside curve of the pot, using a variety of round and oval tools that are designed to use with a rotary power tool for carving and engraving. However, given the scale of this project, I did NOT use them in a power tool, but just used them by hand. Then I gave it a quick rub with some coconut oil, and about 2 hours after starting I had this:

tiny pot