Carving a rabbit onto a wooden bench

This elm bench seat had already been made by Alex Arthur at the Woodworks Project in Bath. He suggested to the client that I could carve the design that they wanted on it.

I didn't want to make the lettering too deep, so carved a textured surface inside a double border. This catches the light so that the letters read easily from any angle. All of the carving here was done using traditional hand tools.

It was a nice surprise when the person commissioning the bench asked if I could also produce a simple, quick carving of a rabbit on there, peeping out from behind a log. The rabbit needed to look cute, but still fairly realistic. I'm very happy with the result as the young rabbit looks out from behind the old log with a bluebell growing nearby.

The King Charles House in Worcester; a warning in a pub and a fleeing king

On a recent visit to Worcester, I went into the King Charles House on New Street. The timber-framed building looks like an old and historic pub, although it has had many uses over the years and was only recently sympathetically restored to its former glory.

A sign next to the entrance relates how the future King Charles the Second, after being defeated by Oliver Cromwell's forces at the Battle of Worcester, fled from this pub into exile in mainland Europe. The tale of his escape is pretty gripping in itself. He was eventually invited back to Britain and crowned king in the 'Restoration' of 1660, after the death of Cromwell.

The dour, joyless Puritanism promoted by Cromwell and his followers disapproved of such sinful activities as gambling, music, dancing and drinking ale so it must have been a great relief for many when the far more relaxed and fun-loving king was back. Many British pubs were opened in this time and some are still around today; the names reflecting Charles' history. Examples are the Royal Oak (from the tree he hid in while being hunted at Boscobel House) and the Black Boy, which has nothing to do with racial meanings but instead refers to Charles the Second's nickname due to his black hair.

The over mantle above the fireplace in the pub is well worth a look. It is dated 1634 on one panel, which suggests that it was carved during the reign of Charles the First. He was the father of Charles the Second and was executed in 1649 after losing the Civil War to Cromwell's forces.

The carved panels show some exuberant green men along the top, together with warnings of the perils of gambling and other vices. I like the central panel in particular. It shows Satan, carrying his pitchfork, bursting in on some men gambling (perhaps on the Sabbath?). One man desperately tries to hide under the table.

Another panel, dated 1634, shows Satan catching some drunkards by surprise.

These seem like pretty hypocritical things to have on display in a tavern, but I'd suggest that there might be a joke being played here. 

This carved date was during Charles the First's reign, when tensions with Cromwells' Parliament were increasing. The panels seem to show good old tedious religious warnings against immoral behaviour; however the people shown are wearing clothes more like those worn by Puritans than the extravagant fashions favoured by many Royalists.

Given that Charles the Second chose to hide at this tavern after his defeat in battle, I wonder if a sly jab is being directed here by Royalist owners at Cromwell's zealous followers and their hypocrisy?

Some funny characters in a carving commission

Jim Sharples is a very skilled furniture designer and maker based in Bristol. He needed some carvings on his latest project and asked me if I could help. 

The pieces will be part of a kitchen setup to be used by children. These boxes each have the name of the timber used to make them, as well as a simple carving showing the leaf and fruit of each tree:

I really enjoyed the next part of the commission. Jim wanted a carving on part of the woodwork that was fun and relevant to the use of the space in food preparation. I decided to carve some vegetable characters jumping into the pot to make dinner. 

After sending a sketch to Jim for approval, they were carved in shallow relief. This meant that there weren't any deep pockets in the carving that would be hard to clean properly. The veg and pasta are running or crawling along the top of the box, then jumping into the pot below.

Look out for the sunbathing broccoli, the parachuting pea and the tomato trying to 'ketchup'!

Jim has promised to send photos of the finished project and I'm really looking forward to seeing it all in place.

Carving workshops and making a bench for LinkAge in Lawrence Weston, Bristol with younger and older participants

Running workshops for LinkAge is always a lot of fun. They organise projects to try and get young and old people working together, encouraging communication between two groups that might not otherwise come into contact in a positive situation.

I've led several workshops in the west of Bristol for LinkAge previously and it was great to be asked to run these two days at Blaise Weston Court retirement home in Lawrence Weston.

Everything was set up in the main atrium of the building, so residents could drop in and have a go if they wanted to. There were two possible activities; making a simple, shallow relief carving or working together to make a bench from larch timber, to go in the garden of the home.

I hadn't run a session in this kind of environment before and noticed that many people having a go had mobility issues, which would perhaps make going to a venue elsewhere difficult and unappealing. It was great to see them getting stuck into the activity in a more convenient setting and some people commented that they really enjoyed using tools again, after a working life in a trade such as electrician.

Three young people from the local Gateway school were also helping to build the bench and they worked very hard, alongside one of the residents of the home, making a great job of the finished bench.

Everyone seemed very happy with how things went and I hope that the bench will be in the garden for a long time to come!

Carving and painting a sign in Greek

This one was a first for me: creating an oak sign with the wording in Greek (not a language that I'm familiar with). It will be hung on a house in Greece and so I waited for the recipients to okay the lettering before starting work. 

In case you are wondering, the sign says 'House of Flowers'.

The edges of the sign were deliberately left with tool marks to seem more rustic and the white lettering will stand out even if the oak starts to age and 'silver' on exposure to the weather.

I really enjoyed painting the hibiscus flower. It's nice to lay down the carving tools and pick up a paintbrush now and again.

Teaching woodcarving at Nailsea school, near Bristol: carving a Green Man into a log of Ash wood

On the weekend before Christmas, I went back to Nailsea school to do some more woodcarving tuition. After teaching a very enjoyable session there previously, working with pupils at the school, I was looking forward to it!

This session was a little different as all of the people attending were adults and the session was partially funded by a local community group; the Nailsea Community Trust. We also had to carve in the art room instead of the outdoor DEN space, as the rain was pouring down outside. 

However, the tables in that room were at just the right height to carve (carver's benches are generally higher than joiner's benches). The hot drinks and snacks were also on hand courtesy of Rebecca Hollingdale, who runs the DEN project at the school and who organised the session.

The Green Man is such an intriguing image, open to such varied interpretation, that I always enjoy watching people carve them. We were using logs of Ash (Fraxinus excelsior), sourced  by the DEN project from recent woodland management work. 

Ash is very pleasant to work with when freshly-cut and green, but can be tough work to carve by hand once seasoned. It is also not particularly durable outdoors, but that could be an attractive feature for some people I'm sure - the image of the Green Man returning to nature.

After a brief safety talk and a few (hopefully) handy pointers about facial anatomy, the group started carving. Some people were quite happy to get stuck in, but others were more reluctant to start cutting in deeply. Sculpting a face can be quite daunting and I can completely understand that some people would feel a little nervousness and even frustration when setting out to do such a project. I've found that for many learners who feel a bit overwhelmed, the best thing to do is just to start carving, removing the outer bark at first to see where the process takes you.

Once everyone was into the flow of things, one of the most rewarding things about the day was seeing everyone starting to create unique and expressive sculptures. All of the faces were very different and by the end everyone seemed very happy with the carvings that they had produced. 

Some people used the differently-coloured inner and outer bark layers against the pale ash wood to make some very interesting designs.

Some faces seemed to show someone who was relaxed, others were much more dynamic with expressive tool marks left on them:

It was great to see all of the faces put together at the end (apart from one, as the person who carved it had to go home a bit earlier). I'm sure you'll agree that they look very interesting together, showing a few different interpretations of the image of the Green Man.

Another hidden carved treasure in Bristol: the Canynges fireplace in the Savage's wigwam and the secret meaning of the Judgement of Solomon

Regular readers of this blog (thank you, by the way!) will know that I'm very interested in older British carvings and the things that they show. Perhaps this is partly due to many carvings having been destroyed during particular periods in the country's history: King Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, the over-zealous Puritans, the prudish Victorians and bombers during the Second World War have all caused many historic carvings to be lost in this country. Those that have survived often give fascinating glimpses of the lives and interests of the carvers that made them and the times that they lived in, as well as the techniques that they used.

If you are visiting Bristol, my own favourite woodcarving highlights to try and see are:

The sixteenth century misericords in Bristol cathedral

The eighteenth century carvings from Thomas Paty's workshop, in Redland Chapel

The Grinling Gibbons oak overmantle in Bristol library

The oak rooms in the Red Lodge, from the late sixteenth century

In this post, I'd like to share another treasure. It is the Canynges fireplace in the Bristol Savage's wigwam.

The Bristol Savages are a society of artists and musicians who meet in the 'wigwam', an impressive building in the garden of the Red Lodge in Bristol. 

Image from http://brisray.com/bristol/bukpcards41.htm

The society first began meeting in 1894 and took the name 'Savages' in 1904. In 1919, the Red Lodge came on the market and the Savages bought it. After drawing up a lease to allow continued use of the building for meetings, it was officially handed over to the City of Bristol. 

The design of the wigwam is loosely based on a Gloucestershire tithe barn. It was designed by a member of the Savages named C.F.W. Dening, and became their official meeting place in April 1920.

Although it is not generally open to the public, on Open Doors days non-members can go inside the wigwam and see the collection of strange and fascinating artefacts. That is how I came to see the impressive carved fireplace that is the subject of this post.

According to an information board next to the fireplace, it originally stood in Canynge's House in Bristol. When that building was demolished in the 1930's, a member of the Savages named Eddie Welch rescued this fireplace and gave it to them. 

Image from http://jot101ok.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/a-devastated-bookshop.html

This painting, by A.E. Parkman, shows the fireplace in its original home after a destructive fire in 1881. At this time, the building was occupied by C.T. Jefferies and Sons who were printers and booksellers. The house was originally built for the Canynges, a family of powerful and wealthy medieval Bristolian merchants. 

William Canynge the Younger (b. 1400-d. 1474) gave a lot of money to St Mary Redcliffe church in Bristol and his merchant's mark can still be seen carved or painted on many places in the church, as well as his heraldic shield (showing three moor's heads) and also statues of Canynge himself.

Image from http://stmaryredcliffe.co.uk/files/2014/08/St-Mary-Redcliffe-NW-tower-vaulting-report-revised-assembled-reduced.pdf

He had this fireplace in his banqueting hall and the information board points out that it 'must have witnessed the vast feast that Canynge gave to Edward IV in 1461'.

According to the information board, there are at least three phases of carving on display in the fireplace. The lower part dates to around 1350.

On each side of the fireplace stands a figure. These show William Canynge the Younger as a layman on the left and as a member of the clergy on the right (he was ordained in 1468 after the death of his wife and became dean of Westbury-on-Trym in 1469). They must have been added later on and you may notice that they have already been removed from the fireplace in Parkman's painting shown above.

The over mantle may have been added at a later date again. The information board says that its age is 'Jacobean (say 1650)'. The fashions do look Jacobean, but that would place its making between 1603 and 1625 and not at the later date of 1650 (which was during the rule of Cromwell's Parliament, an unlikely period for such an elaborate and obviously Royalist feature to be produced). 

The central scene depicted on the over mantle is the Judgement of Solomon, a story from the Old Testament of the Bible.

The tale relates how Solomon was approached by two women, who are identified as prostitutes in some versions of the tale (hence the bared breasts). They had both given birth in the same place at about the same time. One child was stillborn but the other lived. The mother of the dead child secretly exchanged the living child for hers during the night but the child's real mother protested and the two women appealed to Solomon to decide who was the real mother.

He decided that each mother should keep half of the living child. Just as the sword was about to cleave the youngster in two, the real mother of the living child proved that it was hers by begging for its life. The mother of the dead child persisted in asking for the sword to be used.

The over mantle shows King James the First of England (or James the Sixth of Scotland) as the wise king Solomon. I wonder if there is more to this than meets the eye though. 

The story of the Judgement of Solomon is thought to be a political parable by many scholars (as mentioned in The Cartoon History of the Universe by Larry Gonick). The false mother represents Solomon, the true mother his political rival Adonijah. The living child represents Israel and the sword is war. In this parable, Solomon is declaring his readiness to split the kingdom with Civil War and that Adonijah and his family should give up the throne rather than see Israel destroyed. This is why, on hearing Solomon's Judgement, all Israel 'trembled'.

The king of Britain after James was Charles the First and his reign ended with the English Civil War and Charles' execution. I wonder if the scene on the fireplace alludes to the growing conflict between the Royalty and Parliament at the time, or possibly the competing Catholic and Protestant claims to the throne?

You may notice that there are two alcoves to each side of the figure of Solomon/James. The one on the right contains the figure of Eve but that on the left is empty. The figure of Adam was removed from it at a later date as it was thought to be too rude.

Thanks to the representatives of the Bristol Savages for taking time to chat with me about the fireplace and for giving permission to take photographs at the event.