Cat's Eye Carving

Happy Christmas

It’s alright, there is still a week until the big day and I have plenty of gift ideas for you to choose from.

I am trying to go plastic free, so please be patient with me as I wrap your purchase in cardboard and tie it with raffia.

I have some lovely hand carved gift ideas, prices start at £15 for a simple tealight holder in Forest of Dean sandstone, or a unique hand carved letter, prices for these start from £10 for the smallest ones, I also have hearts to make it an extra special gift for your loved one. I have a wide selection to choose from all designed and carved by me in my workshop here at Taurus Crafts.

If you feel like spending a bit more money I have some more detailed and larger pieces, all hand carved by me in a variety of Tetbury, Bath, Portland and Caen limestone, Forest of Dean sandstone and Welsh or Cornish slate. the designs include the green man and some beasties with cheeky grins or more classical carvings of beautiful and thoughtful faces. I have a delightful selection of my more abstract sculptures available for sale as well and these have been designed from my drawings using found objects that fascinate me from the natural world. 

My carved words are not just a word, I have designed the lettering to enhance the word and chosen the stone because it is beautiful. I put alot of thought into my creations and they are unique to me. These are priced per letter, the finish, the type and size of the stone and of course any embellishments, these are also a great example of what you could have if you would like to commission a house sign.

I also have some casts of my clay or plaster creations in jesmonite, these are still unique to me but because they are casts they can be reproduced and so this enables me to sell them at a lower cost.

I design and make my own range of sterling silver jewellery which is available to buy from my shop at Taurus Crafts.

I have started selling a small selection of stunning metal pieces by the talented Missfire.

Posted in Carrie's News, Gifts and pendants | No Comments »

Carving drawings and painting

As you may have read from my last entry I have started to sell my paintings.

I have just had my painting of the gourd framed .

The pastel drawings are some of my designs that will be printed as cards and pictures.

The small face that I have carved in Portland limestone is my very latest sculpture and is a very exciting progression for me. I am really pleased with the thoughtful expression that I have captured and how my carvings are developing.

I am also carving some more words, letters and tealight holders, hopefully you will agree with me that they are great ideas for Christmas. The ones in the picture are not quite finished yet but will be on the shelf by Friday.

Posted in Carrie's News, Fine art, Letter cutting, Portraits, Sculpture | No Comments »

My paintings and drawings.

As an artist it is very difficult to get the balance right, particularly in such an industrial art-form.

Just recently I had some time off to rest my back and decided to do some drawing. I like to draw, obviously I  need to design and sketch for my commissions and stone carvings that I sell in my studio but for some reason I haven’t been working towards selling my drawings.

A part of me forgot that fine art was the basis of my degree and that as I trained as a stonemason I could only make my living from my stone carving and letter cutting.

I have been sketching with an aim to having them printed for cards and I have also been working on some pastel drawings and oil paintings to have framed to sell as the originals.

I have reset the balance and I am taking time to develop my drawing and painting.

Here are just two of my original paintings ready to sell.  

Posted in Carrie's News, Fine art | No Comments »

Bacchus Green Man Carving

I love designing and carving and I have been carving a lot of lovely commissions both letter cutting and sculptural but as they are commissions they get picked up and then they are gone.

My latest hand carved Green Man is a design that I drew 3yrs ago and I decided it was time to make a start. 

I have a lovely piece of Portland limestone which comes from Dorset, hard and dense at one end but hard and fossil rich at the other. It gives me immense satisfaction to work on something that I designed but will also give you and my visitors an idea of my carving ability to date, as obviously I get better year on year.

I will keep you updated with the progress but obviously my commissions must come first so it’ll be a few more weeks before this carving is finished. 

This piece of Portland limestone is very interesting as it has Roach Bed at one end and base Bed at the other. I bought this piece of stone from a retiring stonemason but if someone commissioned a carving I would buy it from my supplier in Dorset, Albion Stone and would favour Bowers Base Bed, it has a dense matrix and a lovely pink hue.

This means that the stone cuts through various layers of quality. The Roach bed is full of fossils but also full of holes where the fossils didn’t form, this is a challenge as I need to work carefully around these weaknesses or features depending on how I approach the material. At the other end of my carving is the Base Bed, also the best quality as it has very few if any fossils in the stone and can hold a lovely crisp edge. This stone is forcing me to be more creative and inventive with the shapes of the leaves and vine. 

Posted in Carrie's News, The Green Man and Grotesques | No Comments »

Hand carved house signs and the Green man

This week has been one of finishing some hand carved Welsh slate commissions and finishing/starting some new stone carvings.

As a traditionally trained stonemason with a background in sculpture through school and at University I have a unique set of skills which give me the creativity of my art and the discipline of my stonemasonry. The connection between these two 3D art forms becomes apparent when I design my sculptures. This Green man takes his roots from the Bacchus God, I have used Grapes, vines and the vine leaves to create this beautiful creature and the finished carving could be as I have designed him to be supported by corbels, as a door or fireplace lintel or built into a wall. I drew the design 3 years ago and sometimes this is how long one of my carvings takes to come to fruition. I am using Portland limestone which is perfect for this detailed carving. 

The Green man with berries is a carving I started a few years ago and I decided to finish him this week as a practice to the Bacchus Green man. 

In order to lift the stone I had to employ my engine crane and I kept this piece of equipment out for use with my woodpecker for roughing out but also in case I needed to move my piece of stone again. It is great to have plenty of benches so I can be working on more than one carving at a time.

As you may be aware I have a good list of commissions on the go at the moment, all of them are hand carved but they are not all house signs, in this set of pictures I also have a Silver Wedding Anniversary present. This is taken from a pendant in the form of a Love Spoon. Both these commissions are drawn out to the customers specifications. The font for Soneck House and the Sun motif is lifted from my customers business livery and I worked hard to get it exactly right, it is finished with Gold leaf and black paint and finally I oiled the slate to give it a beautiful depth of colour and enhance the Gold leaf.

Posted in Commissions, Letter cutting, The Green Man and Grotesques | No Comments »