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| Completed Firebowl submitted to Balvenie Master of Craft Award 2012 |
Built with approximately two tonnes of basalt or whin stone, locally quarried and hand picked, and half a tonne of paddle stone or quartz this firebowl/firepit became a labour of love. It was brought about during preliminary discussions with my client, who wanted something to catch the eye in a corner of their garden. There were a few ideas..... a barbeque was considered and a small pond was mentioned. I went home to sleep on it and bedtime reading that night was a beautiful book by Dan Snow, an American dry stone waller and author. In his book he builds a firebowl and so it began..
It took a lot of head scratching to work out the best place to start. I made a trammel on the floor of my friends garage with a piece of 10mm steel rod this took some doing and the drawing was scrapped several times until the desired shape was achieved. It had to be proportionally correct, although there was only one way to find out if it would work...
Initially, the plan was to use quartz for the whole bowl. I quickly realised this was going to be a nightmare due to the tight radius or the trammel. The parallel sided stone wouldn't provide the tight fit i was looking for and there wasn't enough variation in thickness to funnel them fat to thin, outside to inside.
This was the last part of the garden to be finished, all the rest of the drystone walls had been built, a caithness patio laid and paths and steps built. This meant that there was still some stone left over, some wedge shaped stone, this was just what i was looking for and saved the project for me. In fact I think improved it. Hand selecting as many wedge shaped stones from the quarry as i could find( whin is very hard and takes a long time to shape so finding stone as close to the desired shape in the first place is always advisable.) After two days of building I started to like it and was jumping out of bed in the morning to get to work. It only took eight days in the end. My clients were delighted which of course is the most important thing and I sent Dan a photo and thanked him for the inspiration.
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