Can there ever be too many ways of learning to carve acanthus leaves?
My new book, “Carving the Acanthus Leaf,” has full and complete step-by-step instructions on how to carve a variety of different historical acanthus leaves using hundreds of detailed photos and drawings. However, as we all have different styles of learning, sometimes written instruction is not enough to fully comprehend the carving process. So in addition to the book, I am now offering full HD video lessons and resin study casts that go with Chapters 4 through 16 of my book.
If you are familiar with my Online School of Traditional Woodcarving, the video lessons are similar in teaching structure style, showing real-time video with close-up details and tool identification throughout the lesson. Also, if you are a Premium Member of my school, you will receive a 15 percent loyalty discount to these video lessons.
The resin study casts are direct replicas made from the original wood-carved leaves from these chapters. Having something that you can view, hold in your hands, and study the details can greatly help in the learning process. (Or … you can use these as decorative details in your home.)
One way or another, you will learn to carve acanthus leaves!
“Toy Makers,” photo taken between 1909 and 1919. Courtesy of: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-npcc-19400.
“The return of Christmas is a kind of beacon in the year. Whether it is the Christmas of childhood, full of excitement and a flow of good things, or the Christmas of older folk, woven with memories, or the Christmas of the captives of men far from home, for whom it is full of wistful longings, it is a season different from other seasons and a day different from other days which somehow, even under the most desperate conditions through the grim years of war and its aftermath, men have contrived in some way to celebrate. It stands for the good, peaceful things, for the kindly things, for sanity, in a world in which these are too often eclipsed and, in spite of the trappings of festivity which seem to smother it yet do not, it sends out its light under the dark skies of midwinter to give us new heart.
“… Christmas is the best of all times to relax in, with its break from the ordinary routine, free from the secret pressure of jobs waiting to be done which so often haunts other brief holidays. Time is so precious and those of us with eager and willing hands find more than enough to keep them busy and this question of relaxing can sometimes be quite difficult. How often we arrive home feeling tired at the end of a day’s work and disinclined to make a fresh start on a job of woodwork for ourselves yet with a kind of inner conflict because we do want to get it done. So after a wash and a meal we rather grudgingly make a start and in next to no time our tiredness vanishes and we become completely and happily absorbed in the work. By bedtime we are filled with a pleasant sense of achievement which will encourage us to repeat the process on other evenings. Nine times out of ten it works, but the tenth time may come when fatigue has gone deeper and on such an evening nothing goes right. Any little difficulty makes us impatient and irritable, something is lacking in quick co-ordination between mind and tool and the only remedy is to stop work before, in a rush of impatience, we do some real damage to the work. The fact is we remain so much of a mystery to ourselves that to decide even such a point as this is not always so simple as it seems. If we ceased to work when we did not feel like it we should accomplish less and less and probably end by losing even the desire to work: on the other hand there comes a time when to persist in spite of danger signals is asking for trouble.
“The only remedy is to learn to know the danger signals for what they are. The impatience that is founded on fatigue is something more than a mood. The latter will pass if we are firm with it and exercise the control that is a fundamental part of good craftsmanship: indeed the first-class craftsman will keep control from sheer ingrained habit however tired he is. But he also knows when to stop. One of the fascinations of craft work is that it compels us to this awareness of ourselves. We learn something of our limitations, of our tendencies, we learn to respect our own powers and feel a pride in developing them. It is by doing that the personality grows as well as the skill. It is a heartening thought for Christmas, when we can set our tools aside with easy minds to rejoice in the birthday of the child who, by choosing himself to become a craftsman in wood, blessed both the craft and the wood for all time.”
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of blog posts by Richard Jones, who has written a detailed book about timber technology, which is scheduled to be released in early 2018.
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
What’s the best way to approach writing a book for publication? Well, probably not the way I went about it.
So what did I write about? At the end of 2007, I’d perhaps created a manuscript of about 15,000 words and devised a list of key headings. Writing as a woodworker for other woodworkers, not as a wood scientist, I’d decided the following list of topics covered what I, as the model woodworker in this exercise, ought to have a pretty good grasp of, and this probably applied to all serious woodworkers, both professional and amateur:
• From the Kiln to the User (Storing, Transporting and Selling Dried Wood)
• Fungi
• Insect Pests
• Wood Strength and Structures
• Ecological and Environmental Issues
There were additional topics I felt it important to cover to round out the knowledge of the thoughtful and inquisitive woodworker, such as tree history, tree distribution, a section on the oaks in particular, balanoculture, ancient deforestation, socio-political and historical issues concerning trees and their use, the Latin-binomial system of identification, tree oddities and migration, and so on. All might be considered ‘soft knowledge’, but awareness of these topics contributes to being a well-informed woodworker.
In 2007 I met a publisher of craft books I knew at a woodworking show in the north of England. We talked about my writing project and he indicated he was interested in offering me a contract to write the book. I turned him down gently saying I didn’t want to work to a publisher’s deadline because I’d be writing under pressure and too many mistakes would occur, or important subjects might have to be omitted to meet their deadline. So, there I was, writing at my own pace with no deadline to spur me on, and no-one on board to publish whatever I produced. I’d made a decision that contributed to enabling what I believe is a better book, but left me with the challenging task of finding someone to publish my, er, well, I guess, labour of love.
I’m very pleased Lost Art Press is taking my raw manuscript to the next stage. And maybe I’ll tell the tale of my convoluted path to finding a publisher in a later post.
When I first stepped into one of Mary May’s architectural woodcarving classes, I had some vague notion of what it would be like to carve wood. Though I had some interest (I’m interested in making just about anything with wood), woodcarving had never ranked high on my list of interesting avocations, much less passionate ones. But after two days of her instruction, I walked away with an entirely different appreciation for woodcarving and for what Mary had to offer.
As readers of her book, “Carving the Acanthus Leaf,” will quickly find out, Mary is not simply a person who happens to carve wood for a living; she is a woodcarving master par excellence, a truly gifted soul whose work is an expression of some deep passion, driven by faith, and guided by years of diligent apprenticeship and experience.
To most of us, acanthus leaf carvings are a familiar albeit barely understood adornment to historic architectural woodwork. We’ve seen them in the mighty cathedrals of the European Renaissance and in grand public buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries. We’ve probably even seen them on ornate pieces of Chippendale cabinetry. But what Mary May shows us through her book is the robust history of the acanthus leaf from its early Egyptian beginnings through its history in Grecian, Roman and Byzantine architecture; its influence on (though absence from) Viking woodcarvings; its rich revival during the Renaissance; and, ultimately, its decline in the 20th century “machine age.”
As with many aspects of traditional craftsmanship, acanthus leaf carvings have enjoyed a renewal of interest in recent years, perhaps as we humans struggle to maintain our identity amidst an increasingly technological ubiquity. To that end, Mary has offered a gem.
While the book can be through of as nothing less than a how-to guide for woodcarvers, it is much more than that. Steeped in detailed instruction on carving numerous styles of acanthus leaves, Mary’s book weaves the reader through a complex array of history and tradition, of love and romance, and of skill and passion for the art form. This is a uniquely personal text through which the author walks the reader through her own history with woodcarving as a means of inspiring others to take the leap into what may prove to be a highly rewarding journey toward mastery of a new skill. Relating her friendship with Bill Cox, who, at 89 years of age, took up woodcarving and served as her shop helper for six years, Mary encourages others to take up the craft. And, by relating some of her own mistakes along the way, Mary reminds us that we are all human, including the masters.
If you have ever looked at ornate woodcarvings and found yourself at awe of the skill it took to produce them, buy this book. Read it. Get some tools, pick up a piece of basswood, and start carving. You won’t soon regret the experience.
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of blog posts by Richard Jones, who has written a detailed book about timber technology that required hundreds of hours of research, which he talks about here. The book is scheduled to be released in early 2018.
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
My tentative foray into writing articles on timber technology for magazine and journal publication morphed almost seamlessly into writing a book (which you can read about here). I felt the material was unsuitable for the compressed format expected by woodworking magazine editors. Short, snappy articles of 2,500 to 3,500 words incorporating 10 or so images are favoured. The generally small remuneration for significant writing effort was off-putting, and occasional, irritating editorial blunders made by the magazines niggled: How, for example, could a couple of sentences from one paragraph be moved into another paragraph on another page? It turned the article I’d spent a great deal of time perfecting into verbal flatulence, and rather diminished the end product.
I wanted to create something that differentiated itself from other books on timber technology. I asked myself questions such as: “As a woodworker, what’s important to know?” and “Are there issues secondary to the core material that gives a woodworker important and useful ‘rounding out’ knowledge?” By this time in 2007 I’d moved to a new job leading the undergraduate Furniture Making programme at Leeds College of Art (LCA, now Leeds Arts University). LCA required I develop a ‘research profile’ befitting a lecturer in the UK Higher Education sector. I had a project in hand that I could use to undertake appropriate ‘academic research and publishing’. I had the kernel of a manuscript suited for such a purpose where light Harvard Referencing would be appropriate.
My starting point was to write what I knew, but to verify the information. It quickly became apparent that what I ‘knew’ was a mixture of truth, along with myth and hearsay that had been passed down through generations of woodworkers to me. I needed to research a topic through studying several reliable sources of information, collate, assess, draw conclusions, and then write. Sources were books, journals, online publications, personal discussions and correspondence with specialists in their field, all with verifiable credentials, e.g., wood scientists, entomologists, mycologists, engineers, etc, and further, to persuade experts to peer review relevant sections of my manuscript. Being in an academic field at the time of writing had its advantages. There’s a common etiquette in academia of peer reviewing the work of fellow academics – I was in the fortunate position of being able to take advantage of this arrangement.
