Wasps' Nest

I've finished the tagua nut sliver which was started about June 2009. It's really just an experiment in high-gloss polishing and bas-relief work with what is essentially a flat plane across the tree and nest and isn't meant to be a netsuke, though it originally was. It's very tactile and feels good in the palm of the hand. I followed the design in the nut when I cut it across and 'found' the rough shape of the nest within, though I did some drawings before carving. The nut will darken to a honey brown over time, so the bark of the tree will be more distinct and the cracks on the bark will fill with dirt, making them more obvious. The stain on the nest and leaf will also correspondingly darken.

Originally, the back of the design was going to have himotoshi, an incised beehive and my initials, but after practicing incising on spare pieces of nut, the material really isn't suitable for it in very small detail, as all such incised work on tagua tends to have rough edges and background and looks crude. I then decided that I liked the feel of the polished tagua as is, so following my original thoughts of letting the nut dictate the outcome, I decided further to leave out the himotoshi and initials. So it's now really a one-dimensional, hand-held, relief miniature. Another instance of how the design can be changed in the making to one more suitable to the material! It's also another lesson learned - don't attempt to push the material too much beyond the limits of what it can do.

Tagua's really nasty for carving fine details because it has a tendency to chip and I don't generally find it to be a sympathetic medium, so am glad to get back to carving boxwood. When hard, the nut has a grain, which is laid down in layers as the tagua has dried. Working along the grain causes tools to slip and skid as the surface is like very hard candle wax; working across the grain can cause chipping, so only really tiny tools, much magnification and hours of scraping will overcome this tendency. It'll be a long time before I work the material again.

Tagua, wasps' nest, angled sliver from 3/16th" on the smooth, highly polished side to 1/2" on the matt 'tree' side, with the nest, twigs and leaf being a little polished; no detail on the reverse, just highly polished. Overall dimensions, just under 2" x 1 1/4". Very light staining on nest and leaf; turmeric and saffron on nest; turmeric, paprika and white tea on leaf; mordant for stain - alum. No acid mordant used for tagua, as a practice piece showed some disintegration of the nut surface; polishing papers up to 12,000 grit.