Walnut Headboard-Chest

Below are some pictures of the main carcass for the headboard-chest of a black walnut bed underway in the shop right now.  It was dry fit for the first time yesterday.  It was quite a challenge to get the nearly eighty hand-cut dovetails to mate properly.

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The tops of the boards are still rough- they will be shaped a little- softened- but mainly left as is.  The lid will “float” inside the top of the chest.

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A foreshortened side view.  Here one can see all the dovetails- yet to be trimmed- th chest will be taken apart and re-assembled a few times before final assembly, where after the pins and tails will be trimmed flush.

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A detail of a Q.S. white oak butterfly- decoratively and hopefully functionally placed in a knot with a small split.  There are quite a few butterflies throughout the piece for the task of securing splits and abnormalities-  the joys of screwball  Kansas walnut.

Bosch Portrait Update

Below are three images of the most recent work on the portrait of Heironymos Bosch -now four years in the making.  The first is a shot of the entire painting, followed by a detail of the painter’s profile and the painter’s palette and colors.  The images may be selected in order to view a larger format.

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Grinding Paint

Bellow are some photographs of some very small amounts of pigments being ground with water, in preparation for being mixed at need with egg yolk to make egg tempera.  Having a ready supply of fresh hen’s eggs, it is the logical paint to start making, as well as learning slightly parallel to the western historical progression of the technology of paint-making.

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Grinding vine black with water, using a glass muller and “slab”.

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Collecting a small batch of yellow earth from the muller.

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Four jars of pigment, ground with and then submerged in water.

Puppet Show In April

The School of the Transfer of Energy Puppet Theater will be performing the play The Two Deaths of John Beartrist Laceroot this April at the Fiber Studio, 418 Commerce Street in Wichita, Kansas.  There will be three performances:  Friday, April 10th at 7pm and Saturday, April 25th at 3pm and again at 7pm.  Mike Schultz will be showing his current work at Fiber Studio as well.  Admission is free, but seating is limited.  Contact me at playbanjo@gmail.com or the Fiber studio   316 303-1996 fiberstudio1@sbcglobal.net.

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Two Puppet Stages

Here is the main stage for the School of the Transfer of Energy Puppet Theater with some interesting shadows in the morning sun.

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A slightly more complete picture of the same stage.  Here you can see the main curtains, and the side screens.  The shadow screen can be seen behind the trees of the scene in the stage.  The scene, which is under construction,  is John Beartrist Laceroot entering a grove of cedar trees.

Below is a peak at the mechanics of one of the rod puppets under the main stage floor.

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This is the stage for the marionette narrator of the play which takes place on the stage in the preceding photos.  The wooden container, which is actually used to transport part of the main stage, serves double duty as the platform for the narrator’s stage.  There will be a curtain concealing the legs of the operator.

Here is a detail at the foot of the stage.  The whale is the symbol for Jonah, who the narrator, Jonas, is named for.

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