Transcript of Shona Artists’ Video
My name is Judea. I'm from Zimbabwe, Kwe Kwe. I'm a stone carver. I'm doing this business for quite a long time now. Thank you very much for doing business with us, cause I'm supporting my family, my wife and my kids, my brother's family, wives, their kids. Thank you very much.
Hi, my name is Moses. I'm from Zimbabwe, Kwe Kwe. I've been doing stone carving for some time now. I support my family and as a community we work together. Thank you for doing business with us.
Here we will demonstrate how we do carving, how we do our work. First of all, there are other guys who stay in the bush far away from where we stay. We go down there in the bush. They've got mines there. So they have to dig out these stones. And then we go there. When we get the stones, we get them in this shape. It will be just like a stone, an ordinary stone.
So it will depend on us what we want to carve, and then what you want to carve, and then we start with the chasing hammer first. With the chasing hammer you chase it according to what you want to carve. Animals, abstracts, creations. And then we start to shape the stone. When you want to shape the stone it will come to a stage where it will be like this. It will be like this.
First of all, we have to do our base so that our piece must stand nicely. So doing our base, we have to cut our base to a standard size. So the way we cut the base.
After cutting the base we have to shape the piece. When shaping the piece, we cut the base here, so when shaping the piece, we start with the body and then we use the mallet and the chisel to deepen and go through the piece. We use the chisel, and after deepening and going through the piece it will come to this stage.
At this stage we have to rasp, we have to start with the rasping inside. We use a round rasper, we have to rasper inside the body. The way we rasper inside. After rasping the inside we have to rasp outside. Use the flat rasper, we have to rasper the body. After rasping the whole body, the piece will come out. After rasping the whole body, the piece will be round and smooth, like this piece now. It will be round and smooth.
And then from this stage now, we go to the water. We go into the water and then with the water we use some water paper. We use some water paper from this stage. And the water paper we go according to the grit. There is grit 120, 220, 320, 400, 600, 1000 and the final stage is 1200. So we start with the grit 120. He is using the rough one, the 120. That's the first stage for the sandpapering. Right. After 120, we go to the 600, the medium one. He is using the medium one now. Right. The medium one. He is now using the final one. That's the final one, and the 1200 grit water paper. After using that 1200, his piece will come out like this.
And then we have to go to the fire. We start using burn it to the fire. When it is warm, we put the polish. So we can go to the burning place now. After the carving is complete, we make a fire. After making a fire, we stand these pieces next to the fire so that they will be warm, so that they may absorb the polish. So we stand them next to the fire. As we stand them next to the fire, we will be very careful they won't break. After the piece is warm, we put the wax polish. While it is warm, we put the wax polish. While it is hot we have to remove the piece with a cloth. While it is still hot, we remove all the wax we put on the piece. And the sculpture will be shining but not actually shining very well.
And then have to cool it, cool it down, you put it in the cold water. You put it in the cold water so that it will be cool. It will cool down.
After cooling it down, you see that it is cool now, we have to apply black polish. The black polish. The black polish we put it to make it not fade. It won't fade because the black polish absorbs nicely and it won't fade for a long, very long, long time. After applying the black polish, we have again remove the black polish again. And then the black polish we are removing now the final stage. When we are removing the black, it will be shining now, it will be shining, it will be shining and that is the final stage, shining the sculpture. And that will be the last stage. It will be shining like this.
And after this, we can go and sell the piece.
Thank you very much for your support. You are supporting our family. We have got other carvers back home. So you are supporting a community. As we do this, we do it as a community. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for supporting us. You have been doing business with us for a long time now. Thank you very much for supporting us, my family, my brother's family and my father, my mother. Thank you very much.