[Cob] sculpture

[mudhome at netzero.net]

At 09:47 AM 1/14/2004 -0800, Jilly wrote:
>Could you please tell me what mixture you used to sculpt with? More clay 
>and no straw?

Such a mix might be easier to work with but would shrink and crack more 
(unless you have special extremely low expansion clay - I've heard tales of 
such a thing but never seen it). The tree roots have the same ratio of 
ingredients as the rest of the wall (a pretty "standard" recipe - 1 bucket 
of clay, 2 buckets of sand, water and straw "to taste"). Some of the little 
roots have only chopped straw, and a few of the really tiny ones have 
screened chopped straw or even no straw. Since the sand included bits that 
I, personally, would call small gravel, I screened it for the last tiniest 
roots, and wished I'd done it much sooner. You might need to screen your 
clay - just depends on the ingredients you've got and how fine you're 
trying to go. Cob is definitely best suited to sculptures that do not 
require very fine detail.

>Also, do you have an updated photo of your work?

The last two pictures were taken immediately before I left the Ithaca area. 
Since then, the wall above the cob has been finished and the real tree put 
back in its place, but if anyone has taken any pictures I haven't seen 
them. As far as I know, the rocks still need to be cleaned, the roots may 
get painted with an alis or tinted limewash (to cover the straw and give 
the roots a slightly different color than the surrounding cob) and then the 
whole thing will get a clear coat (probably linseed oil, maybe with some 
bee's wax) which will darken it back to the color it had when wet and bring 
out the straw. The main goal of the owner (Graham) is to make it as easy to 
keep clean as possible. She was planning to plaster over the cob with the 
same finish plaster as the rest of the walls, though I thought a color 
difference between the wall above and the cob would go better with her 
above ground/below ground concept. But when the wall was close to done she 
realized that, since she wanted the bottom niches to be for children to 
play in, the warm white she had planned would not be very practical. So I 
just tried to get it smooth enough for her. I "plastered" most of it with a 
slightly wetter version of the screened mixture mentioned above. It was an 
*extremely* thin coat - perhaps too thin to be called plaster (hence the 
quote marks) - too thin for the straw in it to serve any practical purpose. 
In fact, I would have had a much easier time getting it smooth without the 
straw but it was included for esthetic reasons.

BTW, Graham designed and cut the glass for the lovely stained glass sun 
window that you can sort of see in the last picture, though the actual sun 
streaming through washed out most of the colors. And she's planning to keep 
potted plants on the top of the cob and grow vines up the tree.

>We are anxious to see!

Me too!! If anyone is near Ithaca and wants to go see the place in person, 
I'm sure it could be arranged (Graham is very nice) and if someone were to 
take pictures and  send some to me...  :-)

Thanks for your interest,
Sarah