Blogging for Freya: Wood I? Should I?

Mock-up of presentation

As part of my on-going experiments with how to present the parchment cyanotypes, I ordered three slices of "live" Osage Orange wood. They arrived a while ago, but I've been lazy as far as printing goes. The weather hasn't helped, but I really should have been more productive lately. Anyway, I finally cut a sheet of parchment down into an appropriately shaped ovoid and made a print. Using some double-sided tape, I mocked up a presentation of the parchment print on the hardwood slice.

I really, really like the result. Right now, for my grant, this is not cost-effective. Each slice of wood costs about $6 and shipping can get expensive because of the weight. I'm trying to keep material costs for these things fairly low. For the future, though, I am loving this idea. The color of Osage Orange wood really complements the cyanotype blue, the live wood surface brings the natural connection back to the foreground and fits with the organic surface of the parchment. It just fits so nicely.  Plus, with a thick (half inch or better) piece of wood, I can just use a power drill to add a small hole in the back instead of hanging hardware. So simple! How about you, Spiders? Does anyone have thoughts about this presentation? Is it great, terrible, average?

One of the three slices of "live" osage orange

I'm still trying to see if there's a way to track
down local supplies of Osage Orange here in the Charlotte area. The trees grow in North Carolina, but they're mostly cultivated as ornamentals. I don't have a lot of wood-craft contacts that can help me find people dealing with raw Osage Orange logs, which is what I want. I can get finished boards, but that loses everything I want from the bark-edged cross-sections.

Eh, who knows? $6 isn't that bad for these discs, especially because they're sanded to a glassy finish and oiled for me. Doing that labor myself would be a big investment, since I'm not practiced at it. If you need something done... find someone who does it really well, because they do it faster. I do photography really well, someone else can do the woodwork. For now.