Ye Olde Booke

Have a look at this -

 

Pretty eh.  But are you scratching your head, wondering why there is an old book sitting atop a limestone plinth in the garden?

Pan out for a context shot to show the location of the book.  Here it is, just outside the chook yard.  Its purpose is as a wee table top, handy to plonk things on when opening the gate to the yard.  Looks pretty damn cool don't you think.

Here is a closeup.  Look at that aged leather all cracked and worn.  Agree?  Are you sure? This book, this amazing book that Steve made, is in fact a sculpture of a book, made of wood.  I know!  Isn't it the most fantastic thing you've ever seen!

Here it is in its infancy, all raw and pale and chunky.

And here is its origin, third chunk from the left at the front.  Steve removed a 12 kilo piece of wood from that piece of river gum tree trunk with a chainsaw to use.  After trimming, routing and dremeling the finished book sculpture weighs about 11 kilos.

When we built our house, 7 trees had to be felled.  We were a bit sad about that, one was a beautiful river gum, 2 others were gorgeous jarrahs and the rest were peppermints which we love too.  We cleared up the branches and leaves of these trees early last year and the enormous trunks of the river gum and jarrahs sat on the ground for a year before Steve was able to cut them up.  It is such lovely looking wood that we have talked about using some of it for something special.

Here is the man himself, artiste extraordinaire.  He is looking forward to making another one, honing his skills and perfecting his craft.  I have said that I would like lots of book sculptures scattered through our piece of forest, for surprises when people wander through, the response was a raised eyebrow.... :-)