Despite one’s best efforts at crafting a beautiful cordwood wall with a variety of contrasting yet harmonious shapes and and sizes of log ends, it is inevitable to end up with occasional large, ungainly mortar joint. At such times, custom dictates placing a stone or interesting object in the mortar to break up the awkward space.
Rocks collected from the beach are great for this purpose, but we’ve also been working in some handmade mosaic tiles, or as we’ve been referring to them, gewgaws. There are a number of very talented artisans selling these on etsy.
We had a few river slates left over from the masonry heater, so we’ve added some slate “shelflets” embedded into the living room walls.
Here’s one of the larger living rooms walls completed last fall, which includes gewgaws, shelflets, and a few bottle ends.