Although this creation looks simple, the craftsmanship that went into creating this candle holder is more complex than it looks. I used different techniques for different parts of it.
The first step was to create a plaster mould of the body of the pineapple, which took three attempts and three actual pieces of fruit. The first two ended in disaster, the liquid plaster broke through the clay dam and oozed out of the wooden walls ending with a sea of creamy liquid dripping off the table onto the floor. Not a pretty sight and it wasn't very fun to clean up. The third time worked like a charm because I cast the entire fruit in a plastic container. (See my blog on casting a pumpkin to learn the technique.)
Once the body of the pineapple was cast and drying to leather hard stage I worked on the pineapple stalks. I couldn't just create stalks to attach to the top because the body of the fruit wasn't strong enough to support it and it would cave in under the weight. Instead it required creating something robust enough to hold the weight of the stalks. I created a clay tube to run through the body of the pineapple and the top of the tube was the beginning of the green stalks. This too had to be leather hard in order to sit upright. Next I added some more stalks so that it looks like a full top of a pineapple.
The final step was, surprisingly, the most difficult. I had to create a small cradle to hold the base of the candle. I created a small tube that would shrink to the correct diameter of a candle and then I had to suspend it in the middle of the greenery. The result is a ceramic pineapple that is a candle holder.
To watch a video of me making a ceramic pineapple holder, click here:
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