First Experiment
NAME: Shiye Fu, Zhiqi Zhang
DATE AND TIME: 20150406
LOCATION: Chandler Hall 260, Columbia University - New York, NY
SUBJECT: Moulding thin things (pansies)
Equipments:
Paint Brushes
Plastic Mixing Bowls
Stainless Steel Tray
Rolling Pin
Linen
Painting Knife
Wax Pen
Tins
Clay Terra Tray
The electric stove we used to heat the butter (I’m not sure what that is called)
Materials:
Pansies: Picked from campus, artificially bred, with rather big and floppy petals
Wheat Germ Oil
Butter: Breakstones all natural salted butter
Clay: Amaco moist pottery clay X-15 talc-free
Plaster of Paris
Brick Dust
Wax Sprues: made from beeswax and venice red
Discussion on Procedure:
The primary recipe for this experiment is p142v - “Moulding Grasshoppers and Other Things Too Thin”:
To give thickness to a pansy or other flowers, butter is not good, thus [one uses] wheat oil, which dries quickly and holds firm. Wax would not be appropriate [in this case] because it is too hot, having been melted, and it makes the thing to which it is applied draw in. But butter is good [to work with] and easy to handle.
Other recipes concerning this matter:
A note in p110v_a2 - “Wheat Oil”:
If you want to mold something delicate, like a pansy, some, to give it a little thickness, more than what is natural, some rub it with butter. But it is best to oil it with wheat oil because it has no opacity and does not block the smaller features as much, and makes the flower firmer.
p129r_b4 - “Moulding Roses”:
Roses are molded with difficulty because of their leafs which are very delicate, double and soft. To obviate these disadvantages rub it with wheat oil which is very dessicant, once dried the oil stiffens the leafs which will withstand soaked sand. Do the same thin
g with flies, pansies, and other delicate things like capers.
p154v_b4 - “Strengthening flowers and delicate things”:
One doesn't use wheat oil to strengthen flowers and herbages, but one uses melted butter. Cover the back of the leafs of flowers, e.g. : roses, pansies with a fine coat of melted butter, do the same with flowers which need to be strengthened. One uses wheat oil to strengthen the feet of a fly or of any small animal.
The research question we are concerned with is how the three kinds of materials mentioned in the recipe p142v used to thicken the thin objects work. In different recipes listed above, there are self-contradictory claims about which material works best to strengthen petals. In our first experiment, we chose four pansies picked from campus to test how butter and wheat oil work. We split them into two groups:
Group A: two white pansies to experiment with butter, one one-sided, the other two-sided;
Group B: two purple pansies to experiment with wheat oil, one one-sided, the other two-sided.
Experiment:
First we built two clay bases using the moist pottery clay from the lab and we planed to place each group on one base. The wax gate and all of the sprues were constructed a month prior out of beeswax and venice red. The wax gate was shaped like an elongated pyramid. The pansies were inserted into the gates and the gate reached approximately the mid-point of the stem. The gated pansies was placed on the clay bases and pressed into the clay about half a centimeter deep.
We heated the butter in a tin until it melted and let it cool in the tin for several mimutes. Then we applied it with a paint brush to the two pansies in Group A. Similarly, unheated wheat oil was applied to Group B.
Observations after applying butter and wheat oil:
It was difficult to only cover the back of the petals. Because once butter or wheat oil was applied to the back of one petal, the front side of another petal behind it would immediately get attached to it. Thus it turned out that our initial plan did not work, both butter and wheat oil rubbed off on both sides of the petals.
In Group B, the petals of the purple pansies got heavier after completely absorbing the oil and they could not stand on their own any more. The petals also got crumpled due to dehydration. The wheat oil, which was supposed to give thickness and strength to the pansies, had a contradictory effect.
In Group A, the petals of the white pansies first got stiffened right after covered with a fine layer of butter, but it only lasted for 20 minutes, the petals went down eventually just like happened to Group A. We are still trying to figure out the reason because the melted butter was supposed to solidify right after it was applied to the petals therefore it could not be absorbed by the petals any more. One possible reason it that it added weight to the petals which they could not withstand, the other reason might be that the pansies just got dehydrated and withered on their own.
Due to two groups’ reaction to the thickening materials, there was little chance that they could be casted successfully, so we decided to call off the experiment at this stage and retry it on the following Wednesday.
Second Experiment
NAME: Shiye Fu, Zhiqi Zhang
DATE AND TIME: 20150408
LOCATION: Chandler Hall 260, Columbia University - New York, NY
SUBJECT: Moulding thin things (pansies)
Changes Made in Equipments and Materials:
1. Reflecting on our experiment last time, we concluded that the failure should be partly attributed to the characteristics of this type of artificial bred pansies, which have rather big and floppy petals than wild pansies. Therefore we decided to use potted pansies bought from a flower shop in our second experiment, which have smaller and thicker petals.
2. The paint brushes from the lab have rather stiff and rough hair, which was scratching the petals when applying the thickening materials. This time we used a new paint brush with soft hair.
3. A distant thermometer was used to measure the temperature of wheat oil and butter before applying them to the petals.
4. Beeswax was tried on one of the pansies as a thickening material.
Experiment:
We cut four flowers from the potted plant to experiment with. They were also split into two groups just like last time:
Group A: Two pansies to experiment with butter, one one-sided, the other two-sided;
Group B: Two pansies to experiment with wheat oil, one one-sided, the other two-sided.
But this time we planned to get everything else prepared before we apply the thickening materials onto the petals, and to pour the plaster immediately after they are applied. So after we pressed the gated pansies into the clay bases, we started to build the wax infrastructure by inserting one end of the vents into the clay base and attaching the other end to the pansies by the wax pen. But soon we found out that we could not attach the vents to the petals before the thickening materials were applied, because it would be difficult to avoid the infrastructure when applying them. So we started to apply butter and wheat oil to the petals after the stem was attached to the infrastructure.
This time we heated the wheat oil a little bit to make it thinner, and applied it to Group B when it had cooled to 27 degree celsius. Unfortunately, it failed again just like last time, by the time we finish building the infrastructure connecting the petals to the base, they had completely shrunk and curled up.
We decided to give up experimenting with wheat oil and try melted wax on the other pansy in Group B. So we melted some beeswax. The problem with beeswax turned out to be that under a rather low room temperature, it solidified really quickly so that we had to keep reheating it. It did not cause any untoward effect on the pansies, but it added a rather thick layer underneath the petals which would cost some details when casting in metal.
As for Group A, butter worked pretty well at first, we could see clearly that the petals with a layer of butter exhibited a rather stiff characteristic. But after all the infrastructure was built, and a one centimeter thick, three inch high clay wall was rolled out and wrapped around the base, the buttered pansies died as well.
After our second failure, we consulted with professor Smith, and she suggested that based on her own experience of moulding pansies, she did not build the vents connecting the petals with the base to buy more time, and the metal went in just fine without only three vents attached to the stem. She advised us to make the oiling the last step before pouring the plaster. So we cut off another three pansies to redo the experiment with butter in professor Smith’s way.
Plaster of Paris, water, and brick dust were mixed together in a plastic bowl by the ratio of 2: 2: 1 to make the plaster for moulding. We poured it into the clay vessels right after the oiling process. Group B had to have two pours due to differences in mixing quantities, we managed to pour the second time before the plaster solidified.The clay was removed and the the two moulds was set aside on two clay terra traies to dry out in the hood before being fried in the kiln.
Afterthoughts and Reflections:
Reflecting on the two experiments about moulding pansies and inspired by article by Andrea Bernardoni talking about artisanal processes, I tend to see these experiment as a codified procedure to transform one substance to another from a semiotic perspective. If we understand the procedures of every experiment as a series of codes, it would have a both a syntagmatic and a paradigmatic aspect. The syntagmatic aspect, in the case, would be the authenticity of the materials, tools, and actions, while the paradigmatic aspect would be the order in which every steps of the procedure are organized. After the first experiment, we attributred our failure to the syntagmatic aspect, questioning the authenticity of the pansies and paintbrushes, however, during our second experiment, we came to realized how much impact the paradigmatic aspect had on the result of the experiment. Therefore, after we rearranged the order of the steps, the expedient finally succeeded.