Laburnum hollow form

[fuzzyturns]

In my role as the webmaster for one of the clubs I am a member of, I get numerous inquiries through the club website. One of them was a gentleman who had cut down a decent size laburnum in his front year, and wanted to donate the wood to the club. Most of it was handed out to various club members over the next few meetings, but I did keep one half of the lower portion of the trunk, which was a decent size. I used a part of that for this hollow form.
It is about 6.5" tall and 5.5" wide. As you can see, there was some serious checking going on inside the tree, and because of that I didn't want to risk anything, and left the walls a little on the thick side. The surface was sanded to 240 grit and then I spent about 10 hours carving it by hand to achieve the texture.
As usual, all C&C welcome.

[GBF]

Very nice I like the form and the textured finish

Regards George

[Les Symonds]

I'm not a great fan of hollow forms, but I'll make an exception for this, I absolutely love it, both its form and its texture.
Les

[Derek]

Well worth the effort on all the time spent carving like the shape and texture the top half remind me of a volcano

[bodrighywood]

Lovely piece. Reminiscent of a volcano for some reason.

Pete

[Bryan Milham]

Fuzzy,

I can only think of 3 words to describe this yes, Yes & YES.

It also goes to prove the point I made in another thread that to make something look rustic, you have to start with a good finish first, you can't achieve it over torn grain or a poor finish.

[edbanger]

Well Wolfgang you have pulled it of the bag with this piece  Great work

All the best

Ed

[John D Smith]

 
 Hi I love this piece I would like to see it in the flesh well done I think you could do with better lighting when taking photographs of your

 work it would enhance the piece.

                                                    Regards John

[fuzzyturns]

Thanks to everybody for the feedback and kind words. I am especially pleased that it finds George's favour, since that seems a hard thing for me to find.
The photographs are taken in a light tent, but I've lost my backgrounds in the house move and need to buy some new ones.
One thing that happens with this piece all the time is that people pick it up and gently stroke the surface. There is something about finely textured surfaces that is immensely pleasing to the touch (but they are a lot of hard work to make!).

[bodrighywood]

The texture you have reminds me of the one I get when I wire brush oak, ash cedar etc and as you say it really attracts attention. A lot less time consuming than carving though LOL.

Pete