Documenting the hidden world of the bell ringers: making a peal board

 

What is a peal board?

Well, before this commission in 2022 I'd never heard of one either. Making it gave a chance to see a tiny glimpse of something that most people outside of bell ringing never see. In this post we go up the stairs in the church tower, through a small door and into the bell loft to have a glimpse at the hidden world of the bell ringers.

Bells are traditionally rung to call people to worship in Christian churches in Britain. Ringing developed from the use of a single bell to several, which are rung in complicated patterns that require a lot of skill from all participants to play accurately. Each ringer in the tower will play a single bell by pulling on a rope to make it swing, so that the sound fits in with the pattern being played.

A peal board is a wooden panel made to record special sessions of bell ringing. These sessions may last for two or more hours and are done very occasionally to commemorate particular events or people, usually having a close connection to that church or bell ringing group. The board shows information such as who rang the peal, what pattern was rung and who or what was being commemorated amongst other things.

The commissioned board was made from a solid oak panel fitted into an oak frame and will be hung alongside others in the bell loft, where the ropes used in ringing hang down from the bells above. You can see some other boards and bell ropes in the picture above, along with images of previous bell ringers and Tower Captains (head bell ringers) associated with the church of St James, in Mangotsfield on the edge of Bristol.

I was commissioned by Jon, the Tower Captain at St James, to make this peal board. He also very kindly showed me around the bell tower there. 

The tower dates back to the fourteenth century, the spire was added in the nineteenth century but the bells are more recent. They were first cast in 1922 but were taken down and recast in 1992 at John Taylor and Co in Loughborough. 

To have a look at them, we climbed up a ladder from the bell loft and then through a hatch. Next came a clamber up and through the steel frame that houses the eight bells. This frame is unusual in that it sits at an angle in the tower in order to fit.

After going out through another small door, we had a fine view from the tower over the surrounding houses to the Gloucestershire countryside beyond.

The oldest peal board in St James goes back to 1922, when the bells were first installed, although some in other churches are apparently much older. The one I made will be there for as long as bells are rung in the tower and I'm sure that, given its particular interest to certain people, would be a collector's item after that. It occurred to me that these peal boards are important documents of the history of ringing in that bell tower. 

I wanted to carve and paint part of the design to record this so, after discussions with Jon, the frame now features an image of the actual tenor bell which hangs above it, along with bell ropes and sallies (the wider, colourful grips on the ropes) in the colours of the ones presently in the church. There is text painted on the reverse of the frame recording who made the board and where it was originally hung.

 

I wonder who will be surprised, after taking down the panel perhaps hundreds of years from now, to see this text. What will the world around them look like by then?

Balinese woodcarving tools

A friend recently returned from a trip to Bali and brought back some woodcarving tools that she purchased whilst there. Balinese woodcarvers are famous for their skill and the beauty of the work that they produce, so it's interesting to see the similarities and differences between these traditional carving tools and the European-style ones that I'm used to working with. Although this isn't the complete set, I thought it would be nice to share them with those of you who also have an interest in such things...

The chisels are designed to be mainly used with a small mallet (not shown, but similar to the one on the photo below) and are made from good-quality tool steel, without a wooden handle. The one on the right of the all-metal tools shown in the pictures is a flat chisel, the others have a slight sweep (curved cutting surface). They are tempered at the cutting end, so the edge is very sharp but the untempered steel behind it would give a bit of cushioning of blows and strength to the rest of the tool in use.

The gracefully shaped tool shown on the far right is very comfortable when held in the hand and is possibly the most unfamiliar-looking to a European carver. It functions a bit like a hook knife (or crooked knife). The blade is spear-shaped, with the point curled upwards. It also has a flat surface on one side and two cutting edges on the other, so that it can cut in either direction. This would be used to give a fine finish to the surface of a carving.

The axe is razor-sharp and feels great in use too. The haft (handle) looks as if it is made from Black Palm (also known as Black Palmyra) timber. This palm is commonly used throughout tropical Africa and Asia for a variety of purposes and the timber from the outer part of the main stem is dense and hard, becoming softer towards the centre. In this way, the palm is different from many other timbers that become denser towards the centre of the trunk.

Image by Jos Dielis from http://www.turisku.com/crafts/why-bali-handicraft/

As you can see from this photo, Balinese carvers tend to work sitting down and sometimes hold the wood being worked on between their feet. It's a method used all over the world but is quite different to the traditional European method, which involves standing at a bench or carving stand to work. I suppose that sitting on the floor wouldn't have been so appealing to medieval carvers in a cold, wet Northern European winter!

Sculptures that contrast carved areas with uncarved surfaces; The Idea emerging from the Uncarved Block

One of the most charged moments in producing many carvings, particularly when whittling a shape from a piece of rough timber, is the moment when the sculpture is cut away from the piece of wood from which it has been carved. Sometimes I have been really torn as to whether I should take that step, as the sculpted piece looks so right against the uncarved timber that it emerges from.

I want to talk, in this post, about a few other carvings in which original block to be carved is present in the final piece.

Perhaps some of the most famous examples are the unfinished marble sculptures by Michelangelo known as the 'Prisoners'. These were carved between 1525 and 1530. The one below is sometimes called the 'Awakening Prisoner', sometimes the 'Awakening Slave':

Image from:http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11589&garpg=7

It's not certain whether Michelangelo stopped working on them because the building project that they were intended for was reduced in scale (the tomb of Pope Julius II, which was never completed to the original designs). That is the the usual interpretation, but I wonder if he just decided that the sculptures expressed what he was looking for and left them at that. Michelangelo saw himself as freeing the image created in a sculpture from within the confines of the uncarved block and that is certainly the feeling that these marble sculptures get across.

According to Rick Steves (mentioned in http://thosecrazyschuberts.com);
'Michelangelo believed the sculptor was a tool of God, not creating but simply revealing the powerful and beautiful figures he put in the marble. Michelangelo’s job was to chip away the excess, to reveal. He needed to be in tune with God’s will, and whenever the spirit came upon him, Michelangelo worked in a frenzy, often for days on end without sleep.'

Another sculptor who used the shape of the rough, unfinished block in their final sculptures was Auguste Rodin. This sculpture, produced in 1898, is 'The Hand of God', sometimes known as 'Creation' or as 'The Hand of the Devil':

Image from:http://bycommonconsent.com/2011/05/08/religious-art-the-hand-of-god/

In common with a lot of famous sculptors, Rodin would have modelled the sculpture in clay and then one of his assistants would have carved it into the marble. However, Bernard Champigneulle wrote that  his use of uncarved areas in the design was influenced by Rodin's initial career as a stonecutter. He would have understood the 'exhilaration' that came from 'the tussle between man and recalcitrant matter, with the removal of stone which could never be replaced, with the contest between a hand-held tool and an inanimate block from which life was about to spring.' On possible influences for this design technique, Champigneulle noted that 'Rodin's visit to the unfinished tombs of San Lorenzo (partly designed by Michelangelo for the Medici family in Florence) had taught him that to leave some areas unfinished could enhance the impact of others. Where Michelangelo had left marble untouched because time did not permit him to complete his task, Rodin did so deliberately. The delicacy of his modelling benefited by this contrast, which displayed the sculptor's skill to even greater advantage.'

Gilles Néret says that 'Though accused of making excessive use of the unworked surface, Rodin was again far ahead of his time; he appealed to the imagination rather than to the roles of sculptural convention.' It was certainly a controversial technique and ruffled the feathers of the nineteenth-century art establishment.

Whilst chatting to Joachim Seitfudem (who carved the sculptures below), he noted that many traditional Bavarian limewood sculptures use the unworked surface of the log (with bark removed) to frame the carvings emerging from within. Jo's father is a master carver in Bavaria.

Giuseppe Penone is not specifically a woodcarver, but was one of the leading figures in the influential 'Arte Povera' movement that developed in Italy in about 1967. Artists associated with Arte Povera used inexpensive, often found, materials to make artworks. Penone was very interested in making sculptures that reconnected people to the natural environment and since the 1970's he has been making these sculptures, in which a growth ring inside a wooden beam is revealed by carefully cutting away the wood around it. 

This reveals an echo of  the tree at one point in its growth. In 'The 20th Century Art Book' published by Phaidon, each of these works is identified as 'an act of reclamation, an attempt to discover the natural shape of the tree within the man-made form.'

The resulting sculptures seem to me to share a lot in common with the others shown in this post and must be every bit as painstaking to produce. Sometimes, Penone would make the work in a gallery during the course of an exhibition.

Image: Sphilbrick from wikimedia.org

One piece of sculpture that really made an impression on me when I first saw it is 'Hinewai Calling from the Mist' by the New Zealand sculptor Paul Deans. The piece is carved from an old, found gatepost and illustrates a Maori legend about 'Uenuku and the Mist Girl', which you can read by clicking on this link to a previous post on this blog.

Image courtesy of Paul Deans

Apart from the great, dynamic use of contrast between the smoothly carved areas, areas of toolmarks and the rough, weathered original surface of the post, the way that the rough texture of the weathered timber is used to portray the thick mist around the face really appeals to me. 

Maskull Laserre, who is based in Montreal, Canada, carves delicate forms emerging from everyday objects. I like the way that he will use more than one object put together to form the timbers into which he carves. Maskull works mainly with power tools to get these delicate sculptures. Personally, I'd prefer to see some of the carved skeletal shapes sculpted to a smoother, finer, more bone-like finish so that they would stand out more clearly from the tool marks in the timber around them. That doesn't take away from the fact that it's a great idea and these pieces are getting a lot of well-deserved attention at the moment.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/01/maskull-lasserre/

Finally, here's another one of my sculptures from about 1998. It was carved from a weathered piece of beech wood found in Derbyshire's beautiful Peak District. At the time, I was interested in imagining a world where every detail could be synthetically created, down to stones and pieces of wood, so that they could also have 'intelligence' and interact with their environment.

So, sometimes areas of a sculpture might be left uncarved as part of the story that the sculptor is trying to convey, sometimes those areas frame carved areas and sometimes those areas are just the result of the project being unfinished. The narrative and aesthetic tension that Rodin tried to convey, between carved and uncarved surfaces, still seems to be an important reason for carvers including this contrast in a design. 

Perhaps another attraction for a carver is that the sculpture emerging from the block allows them to reveal another narrative, that of the work that went into producing such a carving, in a way that a completely finished sculpture might not show.

There is also something very compelling about seeing the carved work emerge from the block. It is like a glimpse of the making process, a way for the viewer to connect more closely with the hands of the maker. 

New Forest of Avon Products Cooperative website!

After a long process of designing, the new Forest of Avon Products Coop website is online! I've been a member of the coop for about 7 years. It aims to encourage the use of locally grown and sustainably sourced wood products wherever possible. There are about 35 members at the moment, who range from bespoke furniture makers and fine carvers to roundwood framers and timber growers.

Why not check out the site? It's at:
http://www.forestofavonproducts.co.uk/

One-to-one tutoring at my studio

Will came over for another afternoon of one-to-one woodcarving tuition. They have been very enjoyable (after all, talking about woodcarving is one of my favourite things!) and he has sent me an email saying how much he has enjoyed them too.

The last session was quite heavy on facts about tools and techniques, so it was great that this one was much more 'hands-on'. He got to use my Gransfors-Bruks Swedish carving axe to learn about axe techniques whilst roughing out the design for a lovespoon in a block of well-seasoned cherry wood. Cherry is one of my favourite carving timbers and hopefully the spoon will look great when it is finished.

I'm very glad that these tuition sessions have gone so well and would be happy to consider similar ones after this. Good luck to Will with his carving in the future as well.

.....Update on the 4th June 2014......

Will has carried on with his lovespoon and completed it. He sent me some images and I thought that that you might like to see how it turned out:

A visit to 'Old School Woodcarving' in the village of Walton, near Glastonbury in Somerset

Whilst travelling to Devon recently (to get some medieval-style woodcarving tools made by Dave Budd), I had the chance for an unexpected visit to 'Old School Woodcarving'.

Anthony Griffiths has been teaching carving in an old primary school building there since 1998 and has been carving for about 30 years. He is on the left in the photo below, enjoying a tea break with some of his students:

The classes seem very nicely set out, with a range of good-quality tools for students to use. The teaching spaces are also well-lit.

Anthony himself enjoys carving large flower displays. There is one being worked on to the left of the first photo above. Another is in the corner of the large teaching space:

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Since I visited in 2013, there have been big changes at Old School woodcarving. Anthony has moved to Pembrokeshire and is apparently still teaching there. Charles Oldham now runs the courses in Walton.

Chatting with Joachim Seitfudem about the Bavarian woodcarving tradition (and lots of other stuff)

I dropped by today to visit Jo in his studio at The Island in the centre of Bristol. It was great to catch up with him and to see two panels that he has recently carved in the traditional Bavarian style. He learned much of his craft from his father Hans-Joachim Seitfudem, who is a master carver there.

Jo is currently making more contemporary-styled work but said that fancied carving the panels to make sure that he doesn't lose the skills that he learnt in Bavaria from his father.

They are both carved from lime (linden) wood. It's interesting to see how he gets the shapes on the relief panel by cutting planes into the timber; flat surfaces that add up to give the curved surfaces making up the design. He also much prefers a finish that shows the tool cuts, rather than one that is sanded. We agreed that the latter can look very 'plasticky' if done badly.

Jo noted that things tend to be in threes in Bavarian carving (see the three dogs in the panel). He also showed me a small figure that he carved under his father's guidance when he was about fifteen or sixteen years old. His dad gave his a small carving knife and told him to whittle it using that and no other tools. It seems like a good way to learn the importance of working with the wood without relying on your tools to do everything for you.

Against what the general advice to people looking for whittling knives seems to be, I noticed that the carving knife that Jo uses has a sharply curved bevel on both sides, so that it is almost sharpened to have two angles of bevel on each side. It was originally his father's. Usually, the advice in most articles or blogs is that the knife should have a single bevel, sloping from the back to the cutting edge.  My own knife is similar to his in that there is a second, steeper, bevel to the blade. The steep bevels mean that the knife travels naturally out of the cut towards the surface, rather than wanting to travel straight on into the timber. A knife with this steep bevel can do some pretty fine work too:

We also had an interesting chat about the guild system in Bavaria. Woodcarvers have a guild system there, like carpenters and many other traditional trades. The carvers can also follow a journeyman path, where they study with at least two master carvers before making a 'master piece' to become a master themselves (if the master piece is good enough). Traditionally, only master carvers could open a workshop so the quality of work in the trade was kept high. Jo said that he did not complete his training to master level, mainly because it is quite expensive (about 10,000 euros).

Guild journeyman carvers dress, like other wood-based trades, in black with a black hat. The earring that they wear in the left ear is of gold, with a small carving tool (gouge, mallet etc.) that they have carved from wood fixed to it. Like other woodworking  guilds the ear is pierced using a rusty nail, which the journeyman will then carry on them often in their hat band. We discussed how sad it is that the traditional skills have become more fractured in Britain, which does not have a guild system in the same way. There is a 'Guild of Master Carvers' in existence here, but it is a very different kind of thing.

Jo has a show in Bath at the 44AD gallery from the 7th to the 13th of October 2013. You can see some of his current work from a previous show here.

Teaching woodcarving with the Carpenters' Fellowship and milling oak for the Matthew figurehead

On Tuesday, I packed my teaching sets of tools and a sleeping bag then headed over to Chelvey woodyard, near Bristol. There was a training week being run there by the Carpenters' Fellowship and I was invited to teach woodcarving skills. That's their logo above.

The Carpenters' Fellowship is an organisation that I'm a member of, which seeks to promote traditional timber framing skills. There were framers from various parts of Britain working on building a training centre at the woodyard from British Larch. It was also a chance for them to be assessed for official construction industry qualifications.

Learning woodcarving gave the participants a chance to see a different skill set and tools from those with which they were building the structure, as well as another skill to add to those that they were experiencing on the training week. It was also very interesting for me to see some of the tools that were used in framing, particularly the power tools, some of which I hadn't come across before.

The carving was on a piece of oak and shows the scene in the framing yard as the frame was being prepared for assembly. Hopefully, it will be fitted in some way into the finished structure as a 'date plaque'.

While at the woodyard, I was helped by Will Bolton to mill an oak trunk ready to become the figurehead for the ' Matthew'. The tree originally grew at Nether Stowey, on the Quantock hills in Somerset. It's great to be able to use local oak to make the figurehead and the timber and milling was very generously provided by Nigel Howe at Chelvey. Thanks also to Will for doing most of the hard work with the mobile sawmill.

We used a Wood Mizer to do the milling. This is basically a horizontally-mounted bandsaw which moves on rails along a trailer bed. I suppose we could have used traditional medieval-style pit sawing methods to cut the trunk, but that's a heck of a lot of time taken, hard work and also skill. The Wood Mizer had the job done in a couple of hours.

Regular readers (thank you, by the way!) may recall that Lawson Cypress from Ashton Court in Bristol was to be used for the figurehead. I had got to the stage where the blocks were cut out ready to be carved. However the Cypress timber, though durable outdoors, didn't seem to have the strength to be able to withstand the battering that it would get at sea. Oak can take that kind of punishment and is also authentic for the period that the replica of the Matthew represents.

I am going to let the oak blocks dry for a bit and see how it responds, before roughing the figurehead shape out of the individual blocks and then letting it season further. This means that any movement in the seasoning timber can be accounted for when gluing the blocks together. Once glued, I'll be able to do the final finishing carving, hopefully using tools similar to those that a medieval shipwright would have used.

You can find out more about the Carpenters' Fellowship here:

http://www.carpentersfellowship.co.uk/

Here are some previous posts about the Matthew figurehead:

http://carvingswithstories.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/white-greyhound-of-richmond-vs-talbot.html

http://carvingswithstories.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/new-model-of-matthew-figurehead.html

http://carvingswithstories.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/final-measurements-for-matthew.html

http://carvingswithstories.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/matthew-figurehead.html