Claire's web site: macrame, hammocks, gourds, pine needles, clay modeling, baskets, Temari

Gourd Craft

In 2003 I made a wonderful trip to Hawaii and at the art museum of the Volcanoes National Park I saw a very beautifully carved gourd. I was deep in my hammock period but I decided that my next experimentation would be gourds. I browsed the net to find more info on what gourds are, where to buy them, how to work with them, and I began Gourd crafting in early 2004. I belong to the South East Texas Gourd Patch of the Texas Gourd Society. I am also their "web-master" that's why their site is very similar to mine.

Now that I have a garden I'll try to grow my own gourds. So far I have been buying them from a farmer.

Cleaning is necessary to remove the mold (let soak in warm water and use a copper scrubber to gently clean the surface) but sometimes you may want to keep it because it can have wonderful patterns (see gourd #4 below).
Then I cut the gourd open with either a small saw or a sturdy Exacto knife and remove the seeds and dry pulp. I may look silly in the picture below but a mask is necessary because the dust can irritate your nose and eyes.

For tools and supplies :

Cleaning gear

For the carving and drilling I use a Dremel. A battery powered Dremel is fine most of the time. I'm coloring the shell with leather dyes that I found at a shoe repair store and usually use Polyurethane or Shellac for the finish. Pine needles can be bought online if you cannot find a Pine tree.

Tutorials

I placed on the gourd patch web-site several documents describing the techniques that we learn:

Gourd Gallery

Eggshell and lacquer finish

I bought a book on lacquer and I liked the looked of the eggshell (Rankaku) on a black/red background (Negoro). I'm having a lot of fun now gluing tiny pieces of shell on a gourd with tweezers, and then sanding/painting/sanding/ for hours. My boyfriend calls it my masochistic technique.

Coiling

Coiling is another time consuming technique, but it is also very peaceful and easy once you understand how the coils are attached to each other. The difficult parts are how to start/end nicely, and how to design your pattern.

I learned how to coil at the August 2006 meeting of the gourd patch. Here is the gourd I made during the class.

I placed a detailed description on the TGS website.
I had prepared the gourd first, the design is made with Inlace. There are lots of colors for the Inlace, of course I chose an earth tone...

The gourd below is inspired by my trip to Alberta, Canada. The line in the gourd represents the Three Sisters, and the coiling pattern is a "Big Horn Sheep", or Mouflon in French. One row of coiling takes more than 1.5 hours, the coiling here has 12 rows.

Inlay

Inlay is a technique were the gourd is carved and the carving is then filled with 'something'. What you fill it with depend on what you want to achieve, you can use Inlace (a resin product), grout, crushed stone /sand, etc.

Pine Needles

I've posted a description of how to make a pine needle rim on the Southeast Texas web-site.

It is very easy to find pine needles, but you can also buy nice long pine needles on the internet (try Turtle Feathers).

I used mod-poge to mark dots on the gourd before staining it. The dots can be removed with the nail and leave a lighter mark. The top is in pine needles, I did a snail shape to end the coiling. The pine needle are stained (ox-blood leather stain, used for the gourd as well).

The leaves on this one are drawn with a black Sharpie, the dye is ox-blood red (as usual).

A gift for my parents, the carved design comes from the first gourd I saw, in Hawaii.

My first pine needle lid. This was a lot of work! I used hot glue to define the design before dying with leather dye. The glue protects the shell from the dye and can easily be removed once the dye is dry.

Chip Carving

I started this gourd during a wood chipping class.
This class was taught by Gene Endicott at a TGS patch meeting.
A transcript of the class can be found on the Southeast Texas web-site

I experimented with copper inlay, that was not a success, the epoxy was a mess and I had trouble keeping the wire in place. Then I played with the adhesive copper tape used in stained glass, it is not bad but I'm not sure the adhesive will hold.
As you can see I changed the color of the dye, I used dark brown this time, I thought it would go well with the copper shade and I was planning on doing chip carving so it should stand out nicely. I find the color somewhat dull though, I hope it will look better once I add a polyurethane coat. OK, it does, I sanded it a bit to give it a distressed look.

Horsehair

The rim of the gourd below is made of horsehair. Horsehair can be purchased on the internet, by bundles, and comes in various colors (white being the most expensive). The pattern on the gourd is made with Inlace (Becca color, with 'gold' nuggets).

Feathers

During a trip to Yellowstone I stopped in a fishing supplies shot and found a lot of wonderful feathers. They are used to create flies. I thought it would look gourd on a gourd rim so I bought a few. I didn't want to waste these beautiful feathers though so I made my first attempt with cheap feathers I found at Hobby Lobby. They are too long for the gourd I chose though, I should have trimmed them. The overall result is not well balanced.

But now I see what I can do, so my next big gourd project will likely have feathers, and probably an eggshell inlay, my favorite technique.

Tea-Boxes

My friend Clara gave me several small pear gourds, I love this shape. I use them to make tea boxes:

Weaved rim

Karen Hobbs came from Austin to teach her technique to my gourd patch. She taught us how to weave a rim on a gourd, using a method called "Spokes Galore." Karen is a noted artist, specializing in basketry. She is President of the Central Texas Basket Guild. She teaches classes all over the United States, and she has fit us into her schedule. This was a well prepared class, with lots of dyed reed to chose from. We all had a great time!

Here is another weaved rim, it is a seagrass kumihimo:

Other

Small plant hanger, with Chinese knots and bamboo stand

Clara Willibey and Ali Kalina taught the patch how to embellish the rim of our gourds using a technique described by Dyan Mai Peterson in her inspiring book (The Decorated Gourd).
I used my Dremel (inverted cone bit) to make several large grooves at the bottom. Then I mixed Mod-Poge with black sand and filled the grooves with the mixture. For the rim I used dyed cheese cloth, wood shavings, seagrass, palm fruit stalk. All these elements are "randomly" woven on a reed base. You can find more details on Dyan's book.

Last modified on: Sunday, 15-Aug-2010 10:36:56 CDT

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