Fishes for St Monica

The St Monica Trust run retirement homes and specialist care for older people. They have a large site on Cote Lane, by the Downs in Bristol.

I've worked with the Trust before and did some presentations about carving there earlier this year. It was great to be asked recently by one of the residents if I could help with a project.

St Monica Trust was originally founded to cater particularly for people who followed the doctrine of the Church of England (although they now accept people of other faiths, or none) and that Church is still very important to many residents. The chapel at Cote Lane is an impressive sight.

Peter is a retired architect, a resident at Cote Lane and a keen woodworker. He was interested in making two collection plates, using their fine on-site wood workshop, to donate to the chapel. 

Collection (or Offertory) plates are passed around at services and those attending can donate money to go towards the upkeep of the church, or various good causes.

Peter planned to turn the plates from spalted beech wood and to then insert discs turned from rosewood into the bases of them. The beechwood plates were pretty much finished when he came around and looked very nice indeed. 

The part that I could help with was carving identical designs into both of the rosewood discs, which were about 100mm (4") in diameter. The carved areas would later be filled with a mixture of resin and metal dust to form a striking finish. I had some previous experience with this technique (which has been used by other makers, including the late Tim Stead), and this meant that Peter and I could discuss how to go about it. I also mentioned to him about the hazards of breathing in the fine metal powder and the fumes given off by some resins when curing, which can both be very harmful.

The elegant design shows three interlocking fishes and was originally created by David Saxon, a retired architect who is also a resident at St Monica Trust.

Fish are a symbol that Christians have used since the early days of their religion to identify it and themselves. You may wonder why:

ΙΧΘΥΣ (Ichthys) is an acrostic (a word made up of the first letters of several words) that is made up from the first letters of the Greek words "Ίησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ". These translate into English as "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour". In Greek, Ichthys means 'fish'. 

There is also a miracle mentioned in the Bible where Jesus feeds large numbers of people with a small number of loaves and fishes. Some of the first disciples of Jesus to be mentioned were also fishermen.

Carving the discs

To get two identical designs carved by hand onto each disc, I first printed out the design and glued it onto the surfaces with spray mount, then cut straight through into the wood. 



The discs had round blocks underneath, to fix them into the dishes. These could be held in a clamp made up of a bench hook holding two pieces of thick plywood with semi-circles cut out of them and a strip of rubber inserted to give more traction.


I needed to make the fine lines wider, to prevent them breaking. The eyes also broke off a couple of times during carving, so circular plugs were cut out of the round blocks (which would be cut down and then hidden when glued into the plates) to carefully replace them. The grain of the wood made it almost impossible to completely avoid some breakage of the very fine and fragile details during carving but this was easily worked around with some thought.

Once the discs had been carved using traditional hand tools, a Dremel rotary tool was used to clean up recesses and to put some texture onto the floor of the head areas. This looks pleasingly like scales, but will be covered with the metal and resin mix and provide a key.


When Peter saw them, he was very pleased but requested lines to be cut that also clearly defined the backs of the fishes. I was happy to do the carving there and then, so gave him a cup of tea while he waited. These lines also suggested carving the head area to run into them, which both us very agreed looked very nice too and made the carved designs appear more lively.

A few weeks later, the completed plates were on show at St Monica Trust, together with other work made by the residents, as part of an Open Day. I went up to see them.

This image shows the display in the wood workshop watched over by David Saxon, who created the fish design originally. I thought that Peter had done a great job of the plates and I'm very happy to have been able to contribute to the project. 

Image courtesy of Peter Caird

From a log to a carved plaque - making a carving from a cedar tree that had been cut down.

I recently completed an interesting carved plaque for the St Monica Trust in Bristol. The trust runs retirement homes and nursing homes around Bristol and wanted a gift for the chairman Gerald Lee, who is retiring from his post.

A much-loved Himalayan cedar (deodar) tree was recently felled in the grounds of the Cote Lane site and the Trust wanted to use some of the timber to create a gift for Mr Lee.

The tree surgeons took away most of the timber, so there were only sections of branches that they didn't want left behind with diameters of 18cm (7") or less. The tree was also felled a matter of months ago, so the timber was unseasoned and would not be seasoned by the deadline for the presentation of the piece. Two interesting challenges to think about. I obviously told the clients about these considerations before beginning work!

I decided to quarter-saw the timber so that the rings were at right angles to the widest flat faces of the 'boards'. This means that, when they are glued together, the wood of the plaque will shrink and expand sideways and will hopefully not warp as it seasons.

I was not so worried about the timber cracking, as cedar seems to be fairly stable and not too badly prone to that. Carving the logs in the round seemed risky though, as the tensions set up as the wood dried would make such a sculpture more likely to crack than a flat panel would be.

The quarter-sawn pieces were quite small, as the logs weren't big to begin with, however they glued well to make a board that was big enough. The smell of the cut cedar was very strong; I don't think my workshop will have moth problems for a long time to come. Let's hope the smell of cedar repels other insects too (like furniture beetles!)

After the glue had dried, the boards were trimmed and run over a planer thicknesser to get a nice, even thickness throughout.

The design was to be a sundial, which is the logo of the St Monica Trust,  together with the motto 'Tempus fugit, caritas manet' (which means 'time flies, love remains') and a short text. It was laid out on paper and then transferred onto the surface of the timber. The sundial was carved in relief using traditional hand tools and the lettering, in an informal 'Chancery' style, was carved using a Dremel multitool. The cedar proved to be lovely timber to carve.

And here's the finished plaque:

Giving presentations and ideas generating workshops at the St Monica Trust retirement home in Bristol

The St Monica Trust runs several retirement and nursing homes around the Bristol area. I have been asked to carve some sculptures for them to commemorate a grand and well-loved old cedar tree. It grew in the grounds of the Cote Lane site but had to be felled for safety reasons.

As part of the process, it seemed important to give the residents a chance to say what they would like to see carved from the timber of the old tree. So a couple of days ago, I visited the Cote Lane site and gave three presentations to do that.

 

After a presentation about the history of woodcarving and the different ways that it is done around the world, there was a brief demonstration of relief carving and then a chance for those attending to give their ideas for sculptures. There were also some examples of different kinds of timber and some of my previous work there, to help set the mood for thinking about things that are carving related.

 

There were plenty of good ideas put forward and those attending (some of whom are keen woodworkers themselves) hopefully enjoyed the day as much as I did!