Kurt Hertzog completes the collaboration with Emiliano Achaval
A few months ago, Karen Scott at Woodturning enquired about interest in collaborating on a project for WT issue 400. Many regular WT contributors had already paired up and planned their projects. Of course I was interested, and it was suggested that I team up with Emiliano Achaval.
I had met Emiliano years back at an AAW Symposium. We introduced ourselves, spent a few minutes together and went on our way. Emiliano lives in Hawaii, and I live on the east coast of the US. We’re as far apart in the US as you can get, so other than our chance, brief meeting at the symposium, we hadn’t had any other contact. To potentially team up, we had a phone call or two to discuss a project, created some idea sketches, and were off and running.
The making
1A/B/C Emiliano and I kicked around several ideas. We both turn a variety of things, but each has our favourites. Emiliano is known for his platters and bowls, particularly in koa, while I favour ornaments, lidded boxes, and pens. The marriage of the two isn’t a natural fit. Karen hadn’t previously filled us in on exactly what the other teams were planning, but she did indicate that something a bit different would be welcome. I remembered a demonstration I had seen many years ago by Clay Foster at an early Totally Turning Symposium back in 2005 or so. Clay was crushing chicken eggshells into small pieces while gluing them on to the surface of the rim of a turned plate. The random patterns of small, white pieces of chicken eggshell made a unique accent to his demonstration piece. I’ve never used that example myself but was taken by its cleverness and visual effect.
2A/B. For many years I’ve incorporated painted or pierced eggshells as the main body in my ornaments. My suggestion to Emiliano wasn’t to use that same Foster example but rather to use my ornamental eggshell background as a 3D landscape on the surface of a platter. I had envisioned the rugged and irregular landscape of the moon. I was hoping we could capitalise on weird shapes and mysterious drab colours, much like views of the moon from the rover or the walks of the astronauts. We arrived at Eggscape as the title for our collaboration on the concept. A few sketches for size and shape to use as a bed for the shells were agreed upon and we were underway.
The size and shape of the platter were driven by the USPS requirements for reasonable shipping costs. Emiliano headed to his shop to turn our base platter per our concept drawing.
3. I readied a variety of shells. For the many years I’ve been piercing, dyeing, and painting shells, the focus has always been on keeping them unbroken. This collaboration was going to be the Eggscape of broken shells. Seemed a bit sad to intentionally break them after doing the work, but that was needed for the plan. As Emiliano worked on our platter, he sent phone pictures as it progressed to be certain we were both content with the look and relative dimensions.
4. Once completed, Emiliano packed up the collaboration koa platter and stand for its three-day, nearly 4800-mile journey from Hawaii to me in NY. In the interim, I had been ordering additional dyes for my planned dyeing and painting of the eggshells. I favour the Pysanky dyes that are used when creating the lost wax Pysanky holiday egg creations. Intense and vivid colorations are possible using these dyes even when using only black as a base. In addition to broken chicken and goose eggshells, I decided to include some Sputnik sea urchin shell materials. I often use those in my ornament creations, so they were at hand as well.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KURT HERTZOG