KANO gallery, with web-friendly pages:

I can snap some photos of the process next time if there is enough demand.

“Bricks
Oven-bake clay (Original Sculpey, terra cotta)
Flour
Some kind of clay-cutting tool (A heavy stainless steel ruler, unbacked)
Some kind of clay-shaping tool (Same ruler)
Wax paper
Oven
Foil
Baking sheet

Mortar
Air-dry clay (Activa Plus Clay, white)
Wood glue (Elmer’s, interior)

Structure
Grid
Mat board
Some kind of clay-shaping tool with a point (A boxwood tool)

Building the structure
I drew out a grid, with each cell being 1cm x 1cm. Then I kneaded and spread the oven-bake clay into a vaguely rectangular sheet on a sheet of wax paper, 1cm thick. I used my ruler to cut the clay into 1cm strips, and then cut those into approximately 1cm x 1cm x 2cm prisms (Image 2). So now I have somewhat bricky shapes. To make them actually sharp-edged and somewhat standardized, I put some flour on my workspace and on my ruler and gently patted the bricks into shape. Extra material went into a scrap pile to be remade into half-bricks (1cm x1cm x1cm), which are important to have due to the windows in the structure! In shaping the bricks, it helped to use very quick, sharp taps. The sharper the tap, the sharper the faces of the bricks (Image 3). The flour helped the ruler not stick and also, it turned out, helped give the bricks the dusty look they needed to be realistic. After making a reasonably large batch of bricks, I put them on a baking sheet and baked them in the oven at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for forty minutes, give or take five degrees and twenty minutes for variation in colour. The packaging for Sculpey says to bake at 275 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes per 1/4″ of thickness, and warns against overbaking, so I don’t know how legitimate it is to bake at a higher temperature and for a longer time. However, it is what gave the bricks their nice consistency (and what filled the area with smoke…).

After making enough bricks (I made do with approximately 470), I put them together on a base cut from mat board. I originally tried to use a miniature bricklayer’s line, but it got in the way too much due to the size of the project. What is really important is the foundation of the structure and the way the walls overlap. The grid I drew for myself (Image 4) has the brick positions for the walls outlined in darker pencil. That is the first layer. I adhered the bricks to the mat board with wood glue, and between the head of each brick, I put some air-drying clay mixed with a bit of the glue. The clay itself is somewhat sticky, but not sticky enough to really grab on to the brick, so the glue helps a good deal. Not so much for the head joints (the joints between bricks in the same layer, the shorter ends), but it is very important for the joints between layers. The next level alternates the brick-laying pattern, so that the joints are centered over the previously laid bricks instead of continuing through the first level onto the second (Image 5). When starting a new layer, I found it helpful to put down a coat of glue directly on top of the previous layer, put a strip of clay over that, and then flip the clay over to make both sides of the mortar sticky. Then I put a brick down, tapped it down with my boxwood tool, took the excess mortar that squished out, put it on the head of the next brick, and pushed the next brick down and sideways into the previous one. One thing I learned after about five layers is that it helps to leave one corner open so that the last brick closes two walls simultaneously. This way I don’t have to stick a brick into a gap between two bricks of the same wall (which requires glue and retroactively mortaring). Another thing I learned was to clean up the excess mortar on both the front and back after each layer. If I waited too long and the clay dried too much, taking off the extra bits took off the mortar between the bricks as well (which is no good). After general cleanup, I used the sharp end of my boxwood tool to carve out more defined joints in and between layers and add more mortar to gaps between bricks. The way my tool is shaped made it possible to run it smoothly along the joint in one direction, compressing and/or adding in more clay, and scrape out a lot of material in the other direction.

The hardest parts by far were the openings for the stove, wood input, and storage areas. Putting the bricks over the gap was nerve-wracking. I ended up making the spans of bricks vertically, letting them dry, and then putting them in over the gaps with some loose bricks under them for support. Then I made the next layers in a hurry so they could be better supported (Image 6). The top of the stove and the recessed areas were made separately. The top was built on a piece of mat board, since I didn’t think I could magically suspend bricks and build horizontally without support. I then built the chimney on the top after completing a full layer. The other small parts were similarly built with board support (Images 9 and 12). I skimped on completely enclosing them, since I was running low on bricks and I didn’t want to spend more time making bricks after using up four days of my spring break grinding them out. The actual building of the structure took three evenings. The air-dry clay and glue mixture took about a night to mostly dry. The package says that the clay takes 72 hours to fully cure. It seems to be about right. After a night, some very slight modifications can be made, but no more than that, at least for this purpose. For carving or detailing other kinds of art pieces, waiting a night is fine.

After building the body of the stove, I made some props to make it a proper Russian stove: a cooking jar/pot, a ladder, a wooden board, a quilt, pillows, and sheets (Images 11, 12, 13). The ladder, board, and jar are fairly self-explanatory. The textiles are also very precedented, so I won’t detail the process here. However, I will say that they are a project best pursued with a sewing machine! I do not own one, so I ended up hand-sewing the entire thing, which took far more time than I’m willing to admit. At least the learning was fairly straightforward.”

I’m looking forward to getting good enough at it to maybe pick up a finer nib or something to make more prettiness ~

EDIT.
Four hours to kill during a deprivation shift has led to the picking up of Spencerian script.

I used to write these sometimes,
before my words became pictures I could not catch,
even with handfuls of salt.