Questions?
Please email me here to discuss anything. We can chat on the phone if necessary.
Weekend Classes:
These are 'general' or 'open classes': geared to what you need to know and do, to increase your woodcarving skills and understanding.
Short, intensive classes make an ideal break if you are visiting the area: Herefordshire is a hidden jewel.
Depending on the mix of students - and it always makes an interesting mix! - we may be dealing with lettering or relief carving, sharpening or carving in the round, or a carved element from your furniture project, such as a fan or mouldings.
If you don't have tools it doesn't matter, I can provide whatever you need.
I'd like you to bring as much of your own kit as possible so that we can deal with the essential skills such as sharpening or handling tools, and you can take the results with you!
Email me any time to have a preliminary chat about what you might like to do.
Letter Carving:
This is a 5 day course which follows closely the structure of my book
Lettercarving in Wood - A Practical Course.
We start with basic straight and curved cuts - exercises.
These we build into shapes, and these shapes into letters, a letter style.
The letters we lay out into words.
It sounds easy! Actually it is quite demanding even to cut one beautiful letter, but to cut two the same...
I have found this graduated approach the quickest for getting a thorough grasp of letter carving, but exactly what you manage to do will depend on your own efforts. We go at your individual pace, while you share the experiences of other students. I try not to move on to the next stage until you are comfortable with the last because the end result of this course lies in the acquiring of the skill as much as producing a finished house sign, for example.
Tools and wood are provided.
Questions: please Email me.
Relief Carving
This is a 5 day introductory course in relief carving and I can't do better than include what is in the brochure for the course at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Maine, USA; and my additional comments:
This is what the brochure says:
"Chris developed this course over years of teaching beginners in his Herefordshire studio. Now it is also a book, Relief Carving: A Practical Introduction (GMC Publications, 1998), which serves as the course text.
During this week, Chris leads students step-by-step through two projects designed to give them a thorough grounding in low-relief and high-relief carving.
Chris teaches the functions of the various carving tools; how to sharpen and handle them; relief design and working wood grain; lining in, grounding out, setting in, modeling, and undercutting; finishing from the chisel; and many other aspects of the carving process.
Participants gain a strong base of carving skills applicable to traditional and contemporary work."
I'd like to add the following, based on previous courses:
I must have taken over 200 hundred students through this fish course - it works! Perhaps I should hand out a fish award like this:
I never get bored repeating the course because the individual carvers are different, with individual successes and challenges, and i always learn something new..
The course follows my Relief Carving book closely and I advise you to read this in parallel as we go along.
You have here the essentials of relief carving. If you have digested the work, you will know a large amount of what I do about this type of carving. Not all! And not perhaps the most interesting bits - these come with experience, investigation and practice, and that's up to you. But you've got a great start!
If you really want to consolidate what you have learned and take it a little farther, you can follow up this week's course by taking the tutorial the subsequent week. Here we can design and carve a larger relief of your own, so completing the schedule of work in my book.
Questions: please Email me.
Decorative Carving:
This is a 3 day course and I can't do better than include what is in the brochure for the course at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Maine, USA; and my additional comments:
This is what the brochure says:
"This introduction to incised decoration starts with clear exercises in the holding and manipulation of carving tools, and the making of smooth, precise and flowing cuts which characterize good woodcarving.
From here, elementary patterns build into adaptable and effective leaf and flower designs which can readily be used to embellish interior woodwork and furniture.
Chris gives particular attention to carving the classic acanthus leaf, teaching students how it ‘works’: how to carve eyes, pipes and veins.
Participants learn traditional woodcarving techniques, how to carve with regard to the grain and leave work straight from the chisel. They also gain an understanding of how carving tools function and the essential skill of sharpening."
I'd like to add the following, based on previous courses:
This is fundamental woodcarving: working from the tools, outwards, so to speak.
I want students to go away understanding what tools do, how to manipulate them to get different effects, and with a small but useful repertoire of patterns and decorative motifs which will lead on to others, with practice and experiment.
Questions: please Email me.
