Little Urchin

I've finished another peice inspired by the gladioli corms. I've called it Little Urchin for what I think are obvious reasons.
The exterior is textured polished plaster with an Iron Pyrite sun (also known as coal dollars) set into the top.
I'm going to make a few of these in different sizes. this one is 6 inches across. The pic below shows an uncleaned sun.

 The guys who do this for a living use Hydrocholic Acid to dissolve the coal covering them, but somehow I didn't fancy that method in my kitchen sink so I relied on good old household limescale remover and elbow grease. You can get them all clean and bright, but I liked this one as it is. I love working with natural materials as they are never the same shape, pattern or colour....these pyrite suns range from silver through gold and even rainbow metalic colours. You never know what you are going to get until it's clean and dry. In the photos you can't quite see how shiny and metallic these are.
It's a very tactile little chap.