Three Shrink Pots

I’ve finished three shrink pots that are available for purchase. I’ll provide some details about each of them below. If you’re interested, please email me at dandkfish@gmail.com. Prices include shipping. Thanks.

I’ll start with the pot on the left, Riven Twist, It’s related to my most recent post in which I mentioned making a stain from black walnut husks. I made the body from a maple tree that fell just across the road from us. I formed the outside with four strikes of the fro and left the natural split surface, along with the twist in the tree revealed by the splits.

I stained the bright white maple wood with two applications of the walnut husk stain. More applications would have darkened it more. After the lid was finished, I went over everything with a linseed/beeswax blend.

The lid is made from black walnut wood with “granny smith” milk paint. The “finial” is a burl I set aside years ago from a maple or birch log. I pealed the fresh bark from the outside back then and left the surface under the bark to oxidize. This finally seemed like an appropriate spot for it.

The rabbet under the lid is formed by a basswood board with a little chip carving. Three brass screws secure the burl to the lid from below. 9 1/4″ x 3″. $400 includes shipping. SOLD

Now onto the next one, All the Fish Needs. This birch pot with no lid is ideal for holding pencils and pens, or it could have all sorts of other uses.

I carved the outer surface with a gouge to create a texture of wavy random flutes. On the side wall of the pot, there was a tight pin knot. I made that the eye of a fish that merges with the water. With my pen knife, around the lower portion of the pot, I carved a line from Thomas Merton’s translation of Chuang Tzu (Zhuang Zhou) from Merton’s 1965 book The Way of Chuang Tzu: “All the fish needs is to get lost in water.”

After carving, I painted with artist oil paint, blue first, followed by a coat of white which I rubbed back. 5 1/4″ high x 3 1/4″. $350 includes shipping. SOLD

The final pot in this group, No Longer Blue, might look familiar. I showed it in a post several weeks ago, but I had painted it a (too) bright blue. The more I looked at it, the more I wished I had done something different with the color. So I did. I shaved the surface down to fresh wood and repainted. This time with two shades of milk paint, “granny smith” over “blue spruce”. The lid and finial are black walnut. The body of the pot is quaking aspen.