Okay lets take a look at a simple looking yet what will appear to be a gravity defying stand indeed whole sculpture. Or at least it will be once the horn is fitted trust me.
I wanted the stand to be attractive but not detract attention from the horn so much. At first i made a simple rectangle plaster form. To me it had quite the opposite effect of what i was looking for. The bold rectangle shape against the flowing long horn was too stark. So instead i went with a more rounded off look. Not quite a rectangle but not quite an oval either. Lets take a look at how i will be making the stand(s).
To begin with for weight i am going to make some solid plaster forms. Since the horn is well under 2mm thick and a hollow paper mache strip form the horn is extremely light weight even for my creations regardless of the size. With this in mind the stand need not be a great slab of plaster for balance.
Above is the final overall shape i came up with for stand base section. I made these from my favourite card stock of course pizza box lol.
The best way to attach the stem i am going to incorporate into this design is 'directly' into the plaster base section by means of a hole moulded directly into the design. The easiest and fasted way to do this is to simply add a small section of tubing of the size i want to use later for the support stem of the stand. When the plaster is poured into the mould the section will be omitted creating the hole.
As i said the base section need not be a great slab of plaster. With this in mind i created a small wall some 1.5cms high around the base section. I simply fixed this in place using a thin line of hot glue. As there will only be a small amount of plaster poured the small wall needs no further support than it has.
This simple mould also requires no releasing agent either. Once you have created your design your happy with such as i have here you can then pour your plaster directly into the mould and leave it to cure over night.
Twenty four hours later and a quick rounding off of the top leading edge and i have a perfect weighted base form. Now ordinarily this would not be a suitable show piece because of the minor bubble/pitting in the surface of the plaster. How ever in this case that's not a problem as i intend to cover this base section in strips anyway for a little extra support for the plaster. Whilst the weight of the horn is very minor indeed. Given time and moving the sculpture around may cause fractures in the plaster later which could result in a break above the hole. To the right of the picture as you look at it here. This of course would cause utter failure of the stand and ruin the sculpture.
Now for the support stem and retaining ring for the horn. I simply cut down the length of a small toilet roll tube then rolled in round itself. A little PVA glue helped fix it in place. I added a single layer of masking tape to the newly created tube to round off the outer face of the tube. I will of course have to re-do it as you can see i rushed this example a little too much. The masking tape is anything if smooth as it needs to be. This is a simple fix and will only take a moment later.
Here you can see how the three pieces come together to form the whole stand. I am not too happy with the height of the support stem and will reduce the height a little whilst i am replacing the masking tape.
So i am going to go off and get to making some more horns and stands. The next time you see this stand it should be fully finished and also accompanied by others with fully finished horns too all ready to go in my Etsy shop lol.
More soon.
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