Stewart Trough

While flipping through a magazine a couple years ago I came across a photo of an eight-cornered tea tray and quickly made a drawing of an eight-cornered trough in my sketchbook.  I forgot about it for awhile but kept pausing to look at the drawing as I flipped through my sketchbook.  About a year ago I made a cut list and began to make the plywood mold to cast the trough.  It was an instant headache, with overlaps and two rims and four corner voids to take into account.  The mold ended up being made of 24 pieces of wood.  I cast it successfully once last year, and promptly planted up the trough in my driveway.  The couple other times that I cast it last year, the trough didn't come cleanly out of the mold and the rims were very fragile when they did cast.  This year I modified the mold by routing a cove into the rim edges, which casts as a bead and helps strengthen the rim.  I found that I needed to add more sand to the mix and less perlite and peat moss in order to add strength and ensure that the details cast.  I also added a gallon of acrylic fortifier to the hypertufa (reducing the water in the mix), giving up some of the trough's porosity in exchange for strength.

I cast it a couple times this spring and I think that I'm happy with it.  I cast separate ingot-shaped feet for the trough because the mold is complex enough already.

Stewart trough 22 x 19 x 14"H (including feet)

Family Portrait

Looking back at the previous few posts I realized that it was hard to see the scale of the troughs in relation to each other.  I staged a family photo recently to remedy that problem.

Small round planter

I love making these small planters for cacti and succulents since they are small enough to pick up and move inside for the winter.  I think they'd look great with dwarf conifers too.

Small round planter 12" diameter x 9" high

Bowl

Last fall when we went to Ikea I found a huge stainless steel bowl in the kitchenware section.  My wife saw me holding it (as I considered its possibilities for hypertufa) and said something like "Oh, that would be nice for salads when we have dinner parties".  I raised an eyebrow and smiled and she knew what I was thinking.  I've made about ten hypertufa bowls with it so far.  I wrap it in plastic, turn it upside down and use it as a kind of slump mold.  It's never seen a salad.  We had to get a second stainless steel bowl for that.

Medium bowl 20" diameter x 9" high

Rectangular Troughs

When I first visited Wave Hill in the Bronx, about ten years ago, I was immediately drawn to the hypertufa containers outside of the alpine house.  As a sculptor, I loved the rough textures, muted colors and subtle differences in shapes.  The effect of the massed containers is not unlike an art installation, with the planters having a visual and physical presence that elevates and frames the various dwarf plants. A viewer is allowed to focus on the small details without feeling overwhelmed.

I've made a lot of different sizes of hypertufa since that first visit, but I return over and over these three rectangular troughs, all cast from my reusable plywood molds.  These troughs were all cast last fall and are fully cured.

Large trough 29 L x 16 W x 12" H

Medium trough 18 L x 16 W x 12" H

Small trough with rim 17 L x 13 W x 10" H

After 20 years as a professional art handler, I have a real appreciation for crates with skids that allow a forklift access.  I like to think of these troughs as having that same sort of utilitarian aesthetic.