Cat's Eye Carving

What I carved in York.

This year, I decided to step outside my comfort zone and work a geometrically constructed Nautilus shell. I used the spiral designed by Descartes and Bernoulli in 1638, shown in the second drawing. This is much more pleasing and true to form than the spiral which is based on Fibonacci’s Golden Numbers-shown in the first drawing, 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 etc

The first thing I had to do was to set up the spiral so that it would fit comfortably into a 300mm x 200 x 200 cuboid of stone. Once I transferred the shape to the surface of the stone and then worked off a series of chamfers to create the smooth curved outer shape. 

Saturday was a very long and hard day, in order to stay on track I had to remain disciplined and focused. Once I had created the outer shape of the shell I then had to smooth the surface of the stone, this was very difficult as the stone was very hard and brittle and several areas had plucked out as I was carving.

After having spent 12 hrs carving on Saturday with few breaks I needed to have a good nights sleep!!!

Back to work at 8am on Sunday morning, having finished the outer surface shape of the shell, I was able to concentrate on the air chambers of the cross section-thankfully I was getting used to the brittle nature of the Wormsworth Magnesian Limestone and was able to create beautiful sharp features.

The auction was due to start at 3pm so time was of the essence, I didn’t want to appear rude to the ever inquisitive public so I tried to answer their questions as best I could and keep working at the same time!!

Thankfully I was able to finish my carving, hope you like it!