Australian Wood Review – September 2019

PROJECT

Embellishment

Although I loved the overall form of my little boxes I was

most excited about embellishing their surfaces. I wanted to

use pyrography detailing on the sides and also incorporate

bit of copper gilding.

As I sanded I realised the grain of the boxes could (and

should) guide my pyrography work rather than imposing

the designs I had originally conceived. The end result was a

lovely organic band of texture that flowed around the boxes.

To create this look I first chose the grain lines of the upper

and lower boundaries of the bands that would encircle

the boxes and used pencil to mark them. I also marked

the ‘dots’ where I planned to add copper leaf (photo 14).

I used a Burnmaster wood burner with a large ball tip

pyrography pen to burn out the cavities for the copper leaf.

Next I used a small ball tip to define the upper and lower

pencilled in boundaries and filled in the space between

with a stippled dot pattern (photo 15).

Photos 16–18 show details of the finished boxes. Each box

has hundreds of individual dots burned into the surface. I

gilded the deep cavities using the same technique I used to

gild the insides of the boxes. I lightly sanded one more time

10

13

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14

12