CORNUCOPIA: beginning stages

I was asked a few weeks ago to design and make a "Cornucopia" for the Thanksgiving Service" at my local church, Glen Cairn United Church. Canadian Thanksgiving is the weekend of October 11th, 12th and 13th. Today, I decided to start on this project





As you can see, a morning's work has the cornucopia well under way. I started by fastening two pieces of cane together in an "X" shape using a plastic tie. The tie is practically invisible now. I then used the finest of the canes I have to begin the tail end of the cornucopia. This was woven around the four cane lengths of the "X". The fine cane is natural coloured (undyed.) I slowly began to flare out that cane. When it reached an appropriate diameter in width, I switched to a larger size cane to weave with. This was dyed brown.


I continued to flare the weaving and soon was able to add four more stakes. As the bell of the cornucopia grew wider, I added eight more stakes, and then sixteen.

Currently I have embellished the cornucopia with two bands of flat cane. I have some fine white-willow soaking and hope to add several bands of this to the cornucopia later today or tomorrow. I hope this will be effective as well as beautiful. The next blog will show the finished product, I hope.

I will not see the display on the 12th since I will be taking part in the West Carleton Arts Society's "Expression of Art 2009" Exhibition and Sale in Carp, Ontario that weekend. I will try to remember to ask Anne to take the camera to chuch that day and take photos of the display.