BOB GILMOUR

It was Marian’s birthday on Sunday just passed. I decided to create a miniature for her as a gift.

It was quite a challenge due to the small size … about 4 inches round. It required me to make some special tooling to achieve both the initial shaping of the inside and also the final finishing.

The final result was quite striking and it’s evident that a full size version would be well worthwhile.

Here are three small functional dishes that I made last week for local sale. They are in Tasmanian Oak, also known as Victorian Ash. Whilst they really come under my Forest Treasures retail branch (pardon the pun), they have a nice shape, so I thought I’d show them here. They will probably never make it onto the Forest Treasures website, because they will sell during the next couple weeks.

Here are some images of another bowl which is taking form. This is intended to be a fine bowl … a display piece. It will be right on the edge of stability for what is actually able to stand up without an added base.

Obviously, the form will get a lot finer and will change shape a little as it approaches finishing stages later in the year.

So far, I have a total of 7 pieces in various states of shaping from the load of mango wood mentioned below. The wood is so wet with sap and water that it is very difficult to work. Because it clogs the tools and coarse sandpaper used during these early stages of shaping, I can only do small amounts each day … needing to let the forms sit overnight and shed some water before starting on them again.

These are the rough stages of two bowls I am creating from Mango wood for my friend Franziska in Switzerland.

The request here was for a small bowl from which muesli and cereal could be eaten, and a slightly larger ‘personal’ salad/food bowl.

The pictures are of a stage very early in the creation process. They are rough sanded just to look presentable for the photograph. During the next couple weeks, the forms will be fined down and the shape will be refined so that the subtle overhand will be emphasized a little more.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a trailer-load of mango tree wood from a nearby property recently sold. It was destined for the tip so, not taking kindly to waste of perfectly good wood, I offered to hook up the guy’s trailer to my vehicle and take it home … unload it and return the trailer. He gladly accepted the offer.

Mango trees are not endemic to Australia. They were introduced about 200 or so years ago by Afghan and Indian camel drivers brought from their homelands to assist in the exploration and colonisation of Australia. Because much of the inland consists of desert, camels were an obvious choice of many explorers due to their ability to survive many days without drinking and also their great load carrying capacity … as compared with horses. Later, the camel teams also proved invaluable as pack animals in cartage of resources and supplies to remote outback communities before wagon teams and roads reached them.

Along with the camel teams … came mangos. I expect that seeds for planting were brought by the cameliers … but also, the sea passage from India took several weeks and, mangos would have been one of the staple foods brought along to feed the animals enroute. It is logically suspected that seeds sat in the intestinal tracts of the camels and were excreted once on land.

Furthermore, mangos became a bit of a delicacy. They were exotic to the early settlers who hailed mostly from the British Isles and western Europe. Whilst many had probably seen or tasted them in homeland markets, they didn’t have access to mangos actually growing on trees … in their hundreds. So, the mango tree spread rapidly as a highly prized fruit tree for planting in the early settlements that sprouted along Australia’s east coast.

Such was the popularity of the mango tree that, in all the older communities around the country, there would barely be a back-yard without at least one mango tree. Also, along most of the early settler roads and migration tracks, long disappeared settlements, out-posts and horse stage changes can be located by their concentrations of huge old mango trees … living well past their expected lifetimes and gnarled and defiant against encroaching scrubs … and the onslaught of human habitation.

Mango trees will grow almost anywhere there is water. While they won’t grow on bare rock, if they fall in a crevice and there’s water, a mango tree will grow … and eventually split the rock anyway. They grow quickly and become large stout trees with fat trunks and spreading crowns. Mango trees are absolute masters at swallowing up anything that contacts them … fence posts, nails, bolts, fencing wire. Many old mango trees are cut down and, much to the dismay of the chainsaw operator, have a steel fence post or a roll of fence wire buried deep inside.

The back-yard mango tree is every kids playground … bested only by, perhaps, lychee trees. The bifurcation of crown trunks and branches create endless possibilities for tree climbing and the low angle of the spread provides perfect bases for the ubiquitous tree house … which every kid wants. This same tangled mess of branches also means lots of crutches and forks … which, in turn, means lots of potential figure wood for someone like me.

So, I picked up this mango tree.

I had several small projects already in mind. My friend Franziska in Switzerland has commissioned two small functional bowls … which she intends to eat from on an every day basis. There is a growing trend back toward tactile hand-made eating utensils and receptacles as people look for an alternative to the mass-produced plastic of which our world is inundated at present. I also intend to cut some small boards for utensils … which will eventually show up on Forest Treasures.

To date, I’ve shaped Franziska’s two bowls, and also a couple more small rounded ones. One has a large blaze of crutch figuring across it’s center. I’ve also shaped a small sculptural bowl which is more similar to my current style.

Because the tree wasn’t all that old, the wood is a light creamy colour … quite nice really. I suspect it will darken a little as it ages. It’s very wet and reasonably difficult to work as a result but, I wanted to get a couple pieces out before I started losing some of the large pieces due to cracking in our dry winter air.

Not far from here, a neighbour has several really old trees that he wants to cut down, so they may yield some interesting material. More on that as and when it happens. Also, I’ll post some photographs before long of some of the initial rough pieces mentioned above.

My in-line spell-checker constantly reminds me that this is not a word … ‘curvaceousness’ … however, the Gilmour Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines it thus:-

Curvaceousness – the state of being curvaceous; visual, sensually enticing; organic.

Now, whilst I don’t particularly like the descriptor ‘organic’, it is a term that melds well with ‘curvaceousness’.

This line of thinking leads me to ask the question “what is ‘correct’ anyway”. Our words and language have evolved seamlessly over time. And, whilst some words may not be technically correct in our vocabulary, those same words have particular meaning to ‘us’ … and that is important.

Language is an evolving artform … another spell-check violator … which is pushing at the boundaries of ‘correctness’. Words and sayings get created and, in time, become incorporated into the framework of use … and, eventually, get labeled as ‘correct’.

Some day, ‘curvaceousness’ may be ‘correct’.

I’ve never been much of a straight line person … always preferring curves and elliptical shapes over the harshness of straight lines. To me, flowing curves are more pleasing to the eye, and tend to infiltrate most things I do. I’ve drawn boats and designed furniture that incorporate curves. The ‘curvaceousness’ of a design makes it’s execution as an object more difficult, but the ultimate visual effect is, for me, intensely more pleasing.

Whilst I also like to incorporate a few hard edges and corners, my work is about ‘curvaceousness’. I tend to see the organic breathing vista of the world we occupy and am ultimately inspired by that. As a point of variety, I do like the hard-edged reality of urban landscapes with their dominance of straight lines, but the inspirational material for my art work always derives from the ‘curve-world’.

For many, curves are complex, defined by algebraic expressions that embody some foreign language. For me, curves are ‘simplicity, effortlessly joining points between places in a flowing sweep of the pen. The curve is like a giant ocean swell, rising and falling, morphing easily from one state to the next. Curves imply the living breathing reality of the thing we call ‘existence’. We are composed of curves and surrounded by curves.

‘Curvaceousness’ is how I currently interpret existence. ‘Curvaceousness’ is one of the ways in which I currently create objects for viewing pleasure. ‘Curvaceousness’ is my Artform …