Over the last 23 years I’ve spent a lot of time on the beaches of Denman Island, beaches that are made up of wide flat sandstone rock formations that have been weathered into a honeycomb of depressions and holes and a few years ago I designed a bowl based on this honeycomb pattern. When the bowl was leather hard I used an Exacto knift to cut a band of irregular holes around and about halfway up the walls, and I used a paintbrush and a sponge to smooth the edges of those holes. My first small bowl, which I made for my mother, took me three hours to cut and smooth. I’m much faster now but I still love the contemplative work of hand-cutting and smoothing. Last year when a young woman who is a student of geography saw my bowls she recognized that they were based on Denman Island beach rocks and she told me that rocks like that are called Tafoni and the honeycombing is caused by salt crystals breaking up the surface of the rock.
Tafoni