Keeping with the theme of disrupting the mundane, I wanted to add some sizzle to the life of the lowly cabbage. I set about creating a cabbage candle holder that would look so real that it could nestle among real cabbages and look like one of the pile. I achieved this result after a bit of trial and error.
Using a Savoy cabbage, I tried to create a plaster pouring mould of the cabbage leaf, but this endeavour proved to be more time intensive and ineffective than hand creating the leaves by pressing clay onto cabbage leaves. The dryness of the clay (not too soft, but not yet leather hard) is the secret to a good leaf relief. The newly created cabbage leaves then need to dry to leather hard before the candle votive is assembled.
While the leaves are slowly turning leather hard, it is important to create a pear-shaped base with a top that is just big and deep enough for a tea light (don't forget to compensate for shrinkage at this point!) I developed a technique of putting two cylinders with one sided bottoms back to back to create the core for the candle holder, this means the centre of the candle holder will not be solid. On this newly formed cylinder I next built up the pear shape base using clay.
Once the base is ready and the individual cabbage leaves are leather hard, it's time to attach the leaves to the pear-shaped base and build the cabbage. Every cabbage I build looks different because they are all entirely hand made. The last step before drying is to pierce a few holes into the base of the leaves running parallel to the central cylinder in case there are air pockets trapped inside the base or between the attached leaves.
Dry slowly at first and then let it dry in the open air. The base will take a while to dry as it contains a lot of clay. Then biscuit fire.
After the first firing apply watered down copper carbonate to the cabbage leaves. Let this oxide run down the creases in the leaves, this will give you a very real effect when firing. Lastly, paint with chartreuse matte glaze and then fire again. As you cannot paint the bottom with glaze, it is okay to leave the bottom and parts of the lower half of the leaves white as this is what a natural cabbage looks like.
