Soapstone family statues at De Blaker exclusive

Soapstone family statues from Zimbabwe

The soapstone statues we exclusively sell at De Blaker have a long story behind them, making the soapstone statues into the beautiful stone objects. We are going to explain the whole process of how a stone statue is made and how it ends up in your house.
 

Creating family stone sculptures

Zimbabwe is known for its many types of stone, including soapstone. This type of stone, soapstone, is known for its softer properties, which makes the stone relatively easy to work, allowing many nuances to be applied to the stone. As a result, soapstone is often found in smaller statues of stone. It will not surprise you that the whole process starts with selecting a suitable stone from which the artist wants to carve a sculpture. However, this is not as simple as it sounds, because the sculptor also needs to have an idea of which shapes he sees in the stone statue and which ones he wants to accentuate. Once he has found the right stone, he will take it with him to the workshop where he will first use a pointed chisel and hammer to apply the rough shape to the future stone statue. Depending on which processing steps a sculpture has to go through, the artist from Africa has a choice of a flat chisel, a grater and a file. With these tools the artist can make the stone sculpture entirely to his own taste. Once these stages have been completed, the worked part of the stone family sculpture can be smoothed with waterproof sandpaper to prepare it for the wax process. During this process, it is first ensured that the stone is warm, allowing the solid wax to melt on the stone and migrate all the way into it. Now this is often not a problem in Zimbabwe, because the sun often provides enough heat for this process to take place, if necessary the statue is further heated with a wood fire. In the Netherlands we do not usually have constant heat from the sun, which is why we use a gas flame combined with the same wax from Zimbabwe. Once the wax has been applied, the stone family statue is polished with cloths shortly after the statue has cooled down, allowing the ultimate shine to emerge. Because every stone is different, every stone statue also has a different shine and colour, this may make one statue seem duller than the other, but this is the property of sculpting from natural stone.
 

Soapstone = soapstone

Fun fact: soapstone is also popularly known as soapstone; because the soapstone contains a high level of talc, it feels like a piece of soap. Of course you won't feel any more of this with the stone statue, because then the smooth exterior is the result of the wax layer that has been applied to the heated stone.
 

Stone family statues at De Blaker exclusive

Probably the most famous soapstone statues are the family stone statues that are sold from 3 persons upwards. The soapstone family statues go up to 5 persons. In addition, the stone family statues are available in many sizes, from 20 cm to 65 cm high. We sell four types of family statues, the best known stone family statues are the soapstone statues, as on the first picture below. These stone family statues are often bought with a symbolic meaning, so the soapstone family statues are given as gifts on a birthday, birth wedding or anniversary. There are also stone statues with a group of 4 people who do well as a business gift to emphasize the bond between 4 business partners. The rough lovers are family statues made of soapstone which, as the name suggests, has an outer rim that is made of rough natural stone, while the inside of the same soapstone has been worked into a high-gloss sculpture of several family members and persons. You could also give this a meaning of a collaboration. Two parties start in a rough starting process and over time this collaboration gets better and better, i.e. the rough stone symbolises the starting process and the final process is the polished result. The stone family statues are supposedly part of a series, but there are also a number of unique pieces that are on average larger and made from a harder opal stone. As a result, these opal stone family statues can usually also be placed outside in the garden. Make sure it has a safe place, so that it can't be blown over and can't be damaged or knocked over. Also read the product description of the stone statue to see the exact specifications and placement options.
 

All soapstone sculptures that we sell at De Blaker exclusively have been purchased by ourselves from the artist himself, in order to obtain the best result for the artist and you. After all, we have selected the most beautiful stone family statues to sell to you and because we buy directly from the stone sculptor the money goes directly to the artists and thus support the artist in Zimbabwe. Now this is what we call Fair Trade!


Thank you for reading this blog about soapstone family statues, we look forward to seeing you in one of the two physical shops in Enschede or Hengelo or in our online webshop.

Greetings,
Team De Blaker exclusief