Cat's Eye Carving

The Freeminers

This is a commission in Welsh slate of two Freeminers.

“All male persons born or hereafter to be born and abiding within the said Hundred of St  Briavels, of the age of twenty one years and upwards, who shall have worked a year and a day in a coal or iron mine within the said Hundred of St Briavels, shall be deemed and taken to be Free Miners.” the Dean Forest (Mines) Act 1838.

I was provided with this drawing which was done over 100 yrs ago.

The client commissioned Jackie Cox to complete the legs in order to make it a whole picture.
I decided to use slate as it is a very compact stone, capable of receiving fine detail, it is also a very durable material and will withstand the ravages of time without being populated by lichens and algaes-too soon!

I made a template by drawing around the outside of the two figures, once I had scribed this on the surface of the slate and marked a border I then proceeded to cut out the slate.

I then had an island in the middle to carve the Freeminers. I pricked through the template onto the slate to give me some guidelines to carve to. I had to use a little bit of artistic license to fill in some of the areas that weren’t very clear on the drawing.

I worked on the areas that I knew were the deepest points, I then concentrated on the faces as this would give me the ultimate depth to work to for the rest of the carving.

I carefully carved some folds in the clothing of the figures. Possibly father and Son. The boy had his pipe behind his front teeth, this proved a challenge to carve. Then finally going over the whole carving to tidy up all the details.

This carving represents approximately 16hrs of carving!

Posted in Commissions, Portraits | 6 Comments »

The Woodpecker

Full name, Mechanical hammer woodpecker, made by Gelma in Italy and sold by Gibson tool company.

I trialled this tool for a day and absolutely loved it. In fact I now own one!

The tool has a small motor which is suspended from a wall bracket or in my case a beam on my ceiling. The alternative was an air compressor with pipes, regulators and obviously the air gun. We used to use them for roughing out and cutting out old stone for replacements at the Cathedral so I am well aware of the usefulness of mechanical tools. However I don’t have the space for all of this equipment, also there is the noise to consider, the woodpecker tool is quieter and has less vibration-it also takes up a fraction of the storage space.

I am a keen advocate of carving everything by hand and hopefully my skill, training and experience come through in the work I create, but I want to start carving larger pieces in both Tetbury limestone and Forest of Dean sandstone, but the roughing out plays havoc with my shoulder and wrists and also takes a long time! As some of you are aware I have a piece I am currently working on which will have the whirls and hollows that I love to carve however it is about 3 cubic foot and needs a lot more work before I can start to refine it.

These are the obvious good points, but I’m sure I will come up with more!!

One
This tool can be used in both hands and unless you are ambidextrous it is very difficult to swap hands with the mallet and chisel. .

Two
As I am based in a craft centre I am concerned about how much noise I make, I set the woodpecker up outside and tried the machine out on my large Tetbury piece. I asked some people about the noise, one lady commented that she didn’t actually notice the noise, she also wore a hearing aid and told me that there was no feedback of any kind. Obviously this is good news, I asked a second woman younger this time with a small daughter and again I received positive feedback.

Three
So far I have only spent 2 weeks carving my Tetbury piece and although I have managed to make good progress the work I did made an old shoulder injury flare up, using the woodpecker is not a replacement for carving by hand but an aid for it. I will be able to maintain the control over the chisels that I ‘plug’ into the gun of the machine, I can control how fast or slow and how much stone I remove in much the same way as I would with my mallet and chisel.

Four.
I love to use Forest of Dean Sandstone in birdbaths and carvings, but it is so jarring and difficult to use, I generally have to start it off with the angle grinder-but then I am back to the noise issue, I used the woodpecker on a lovely dense piece of this Old Red, I don’t want to force the equipment, therefore it is only marginally quicker but I do know that it makes carving this stone much easier and again the control I have over the chisel-and obviously the knowledge of the material helps. I know that I will be carving more Wilderness red sandstone.

Five
I did try carving letters with the equipment and it is possible-again due to the control that one has over the chisel and with practice the letters would be as beautiful as if done with a hammer and chisel. I enjoy the quiet and simplicity of carving letters by hand however so maybe I won’t employ the machine for this part of my work!

There is going to be some videos detailing the usage of the woodpecker and it’s plus points, I’m afraid you will have to wait for those!!

Posted in Tool and equipment reviews | 3 Comments »

9th July re-opening.

I would like to thank you all for being so patient. I apologise that I have had to have so much time off.

While I was at Ludlow I tore a ligament in my ankle, it wasn’t too bad until I returned to work and did it again while I was putting up the hooks for my new woodpecker-I haven’t actually had a go on my new tool yet!

This forced me to have more time off in order to let my ankle heal. I returned to work in order to complete a house name and complete the Cherub commission just so I could stay on target.

You will have seen from my previous posts that I was able to get to Scotland and install the Cherub commission. Although it was a very sad undertaking my customer was touched deeply by what I had achieved.

Although I returned to Gloucestershire on Tuesday, I made the decision not to return to work until Monday 9th July in order to allow my ankle the few extra days to recover from the long drive and the exertion that I put it under.

You will be pleased to hear that I have plenty of work to get on with upon my work but please bear with me as I am about 2 weeks behind now.

I won’t be able to take any more work on until at least the 3rd week of August, so if you would like to commission something please bear this in mind.

I have written the report on the woodpecker but I need to make some more video as what I previously recorded wasn’t what I wanted, this will go up on my website in the next week or so.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all my readers and contributors-please comment on any post and I will reply.

Thank-you,

Carrie Horwood

Posted in Carrie's News | No Comments »

Rosslyn Chapel

This amazing building had it’s foundations laid in 1446  it wasn’t finished to the imagination of it’s founder Sir William of St Clair,  sadly his sons didn’t have the same vision as their father so the large cruciform building was never realised.

It was finished after he died in 1484 and this is what we can visit today. The elaborate carvings are the work of masons from around the world so there are carvings of monkeys, camels and elephants. There are carvings of plants found only in Canada and Africa!

Please visit this website for more information. http://www.rosslynchapel.org.uk/

Unfortunately I could only take photos on the outside so I did some sketching inside, I could have spent all day there. There is so much to see and the elaborate carvings of foliage animals and figures were to represent paradise on Earth.

The carvings around the outside are very ornate and beautiful and the scaffolding is due to come down in December 2012. So the whole building will be visible-I’m definately going back.

Posted in Carrie's News | 3 Comments »

The Cherubs

Here are the last photos of the cherubs, they are fully installed in a beautiful graveyard in Cullen on the North East coast of Scotland looking towards Bin Hill.

Posted in Commissions, Portraits | 1 Comment »