Making the Jackie Collins Woman of the Year award for Jacqueline Gold, the boss of Ann Summers

Each year, for the last three years, I've been honoured to be asked to carve this award. It is presented annually by the cancer charity Penny Brohn UK to a woman who is particularly inspiring: not only because of their professional or charity work but also because they have spoken publicly about their fight with cancer.

The recipient in 2018 was Jacqueline Gold, who is the chief executive of Ann Summers. This company sell lingerie and other items to spice up people's love lives, from shops in town centres all over the UK. 

Each award is specially designed for the person who will receive it and this year's was no exception. The charity contacted Ms Gold's Personal Assistant, who told them what things she likes, then that information was relayed to me and informed the first design ideas. 

I used some Lawson Cypress timber (known as Port Orford cedar in the US) from Bristol, as the charity's headquarters are just up the road from the place where the tree grew.

I find that this wood is often easier to carve using power tools than hand tools. No matter how sharp the gouges or chisels, the timber will tear a bit whereas cutting discs and abrasives fitted to power tools give a good finish quickly.

The final design was a rabbit, which was inspired by one of Ann Summers' most famous products. I feel that that the sculpture echoes it in a subtle and fun way. The serene-looking bunny has certainly been a hit at the workshops around my studio and apparently among the staff at Penny Brohn UK. I hope that Jacquline Gold likes it too.

There is a box in the back of the rabbit, suitable for holding small items such as keys, change or batteries. The lid is held on using rare earth magnets and has a really satisfying 'thunk' noise when it closes!

Here's a photo of Jacqueline Gold receiving her award:

Photo credit: Andre Regini

Constructing a 'super-king' sized bed from timber milled onsite using a chainsaw mill

Two friends of mine commissioned me to make this bed for them and yesterday it was delivered and assembled in their house.
All of the timbers used came from trees grown in the local area. The legs are Douglas Fir, the slats and rails are European Larch and the sides and large slabs of timber in the headboard are made from some very special Lawson Cypress.

A few years ago, some large trees were cut down in Ashton Court, Bristol as part of landscaping work and some of the trunks were left lying around to rot. After getting permission from the estates department, Alex, Bob and I took chainsaw mills there and cut the logs of Lawson Cypress into usable planks.

The trees were well known in Bristol and it was great to be able to use the timber to make something that would be appreciated, rather than it being wasted. After leaving the planks to season for several months, work began on the bed.

I've inlaid a small rectangle of wood into the headboard, which was cut from a piece of driftwood collected on a beach near my friends' house on the day of their wedding.

Constructed the bed was quite a long job as I didn't have the equipment to cut the mortises and tenons efficiently with  machines, so needed to finish off every one by hand. The timbers were also quite tricky to work with. My friend Simon Nugent helped a lot by allowing me to use his planer/thicknesser machine but the softwoods tended to tear unless all of the tools were kept very sharp. The quarter-round pieces of Douglas Fir used for the legs were also very hard to secure firmly when cutting mortises into them.

All of which meant that the work took a very long time!

However, it's great to have tried my hand at building such a large bed and for it to have turned out so well. 

Carving a self portrait in wood for 'Cornucopia' at the Grant bradley gallery in Bristol

I've been invited to exhibit in this show, which runs from the 9th February 2013 to the 2nd March. It seemed like a good opportunity to make a new piece of work, so it's also been a chance to get going on a project that I've been meaning to try out for a long time - a self portrait.

Self portraits are great in some ways, as the model is always there and works for free! However portraiture of any kind isn't easy and with a self portrait, the maker is presenting a bit more of themselves to the world in the work than usual.

The wood used

The timber used is a piece of Lawson cypress, which came from one of the 'big trees' felled at Ashton Court in Bristol five years ago. Although a lot of people seem to think they were all Wellingtonias, the local tree officer confirmed that this was a Lawson cypress. This photo shows the felled trunks where they had been left in front of the mansion.

The felling was part of a scheme to restore the estate to its original Humphrey Repton design, but was heavily criticised by some at the time. It's nice to be able to use a bit of one of these trees from Bristol's heritage for a creative purpose, rather than the timber being wasted. The wood carves okay, but you need very sharp tools and it takes a bit of time to understand how to work it so that bits don't chip or flake off.

Carving the self portrait

First of all, I needed some decent reference photos, which my partner took. Then, the chunk of timber used needed to be cut into a squared block to make it easier to work on.

I then transferred the outline from a couple of the images of the same size onto the block (face-front and profile), giving the outlines needed to bandsaw a rough shape out:

After that, it was a matter of drawing in the centre line for the face on the roughed out block, drawing approximate positions for the features (ears, eyes etc. measured off the original photo) then carving out the rough form, using a large number 6 gouge to start with. 

I also drew the centre line in the same place on the reference pictures, to give a point to measure off from.

It's a good idea to keep the carving quite general at first - no big undercuts - so that features can be moved about a little bit as carving progresses. Keep features such as noses larger than you need at first and then sculpt them down bit by bit. If you dig in deeply, its hard to move features about later on.

I like the idea that its best to 'creep up' on a portrait face- not to go straight in hacking out the main parts, but instead work the whole sculpture down slowly until the features kind of fix themselves.

Peter Benson talks about someone describing starting a carving as being like seeing a shadowy figure in a dark alleyway. As one carves, 'the vague shape is achieved and, as the light in the alleyway gradually increases, the form slowly becomes more obvious until all the detail is clear.'

The closed eye was the first to be carved, just because I was impatient to have a go at it. That's one of the reasons that I chose a winking face. The technical challenge, trying to capture the facial contortion of winking, appealed a lot. Also, many carved self portraits seem to be 'neutral-expression-facing-forward', which seemed a bit boring to carve to be honest.

Whilst working, the reference photos were in front of me, together with a mirror. The other tool that came in useful was my phone camera. 

Why? Try looking at your own ear, in detail, in a mirror placed in front of you!

Work became a bit more tricky when we had snow, which meant buses stopped running, driving was dangerous and the journey to my studio became a ten mile (about 16 km) round trip on foot on treacherous icy roads. Still, it was worth the hassle. Even so, eventually I had to bring everything back to my house in a large backpack to make life a bit easier. 

The hair at the top of the head needed to be sculpted using a Dremel hand drill fitted with tungsten rotary burrs, as even the most carefully sharpened tools seemed to tear the grain of this timber when cutting straight across it. 

The beard was a bit of a puzzle too. I had left a raised area of wood to show the beard's shape. At first, I tried carving sharply defined V tool lines in curves to show the direction of the hairs, but it didn't look right. Carving less sharply defined gouge marks gave a much better result. After all, most people don't see every individual hair in someone's beard.

Areas of skin were sanded to give a nice contrast to the hair, beard and jumper.

As the carving progressed, I noticed a strange effect coming from copying the reference photos. The face was more pronounced and the ears, for example, were hidden away behind it. I think of it as the 'Chuck Close effect', after the American artist who paints large portraits from photos and has discussed the facial distortion that this process gives to the paintings. 

The thing is, I like the effect! The face is slightly caricatured, but that seems to suit the mood of the piece. If you don't want that effect in your own carving, it might be better to take photos from further away in good light with a tripod and then use the zoom to focus in.

The Finished Piece

The carving is about 24 centimetres (about 9½ inches) tall and has a small carved plaque in the base, saying what the wood is and where it came from. It took a little over 42 hours to make, from start to finish. 

Timber for 'Matthew" figurehead milled

Last Friday we milled the timber for the new Matthew figurehead at the Ashton Court estate on the edge of Bristol. The tree trunks used are Lawson cypress, which was cut down as part of a landscaping scheme and has been sitting around unused for a few years just down from the mansion which it grew next to. This timber is very durable and not bad to carve, so will be ideal for the Matthew. This kind of tree also comes originally from North America, so also ties in nicely with the Bristol-American connection that the Matthew represents.

My mate Bob brought along his Alaskan mill-a frame which attaches to a huge chainsaw so that timber can be cut up onsite. With the help of Alex Philips, the three of us managed to cut large logs into some good, usable timber in a day. Some of this will now be glued into a block to carve the figurehead from, making it more stable and less prone to warping or splitting over time than a squared-up piece of trunk would be.

 Alex, Bob and I take time out 

                                                                                           to pose for a team photo

Many thanks to Bob and Alex- it couldn't have been done without your help! And here's a nice sunset photo of Ashton Court to finish with...

New blog and new project

Welcome to my new blog!

May as well start with a really interesting project... I've been asked to carve a new figurehead for the 'Matthew'. This is the replica of the boat in which John Cabot (or Giovanni Caboto as his parents called him) sailed from Bristol to discover Newfoundland . It's a bit of a Bristol landmark and it's very exciting to have the chance to do the figurehead. The first figurehead fell off when the replica ship hit a lightship in 2007.

 Here's a couple of images taken by Thom, who is one of the Matthew's crew. I went over the side in November to get some measurements in order to start getting the timber to carve. That water certainly looked cold! Beats sitting in an office any day though.

In case you are wondering what the design will be, I've decided to use the same one as the figurehead which the replica was originally fitted with - a talbot.

This is a heraldic dog, pale coloured with floppy ears and its tongue hanging out. Noone knows what the original 'Matthew' had as a figurehead (if it had one at all) but apparently these dogs were kept near the harbour to rescue people who fell in. No human would want to go near the waters, as the harbour was pretty much an open sewer in those days. I'm hoping to use some Lawson cypress which was growing in the Ashton Court estate to make the carving. Further news as it happens...