Carved designs from Devon churches

and a video of some geometry practice

In the recent carved-box class a student named Isaac took on a new design to me, based on a photo of a pulpit panel from Honeychurch Church of St. Mary. I got a great photo of it from this excellent website https://devonchurchland.co.uk/galleries/honeychurch-church-of-st-mary-gallery/

[There’s an Instagram site too - https://www.instagram.com/devonchurchland/ well worth seeing if you like English churches. Photo used with their permission.]

pulpit panel, Honeychurch of St Mary, photo Devon Churchlands and Devon Historic Churches Trust

I had taken a short stab at it before I went up to the class - but only got the basic idea down. All I had was the photo - had no idea of its size. But, a pattern like this is easily adjusted to some degree. I had spent a short time getting it roughed out and then figured I’d get back to it one day.

my first try

Isaac spent a couple of hours one evening working out the geometry to scale this pattern for his box front. And he was off to the races. Once I saw him underway, I decided to carve it between my rounds with the other students.

Isaac’s pattern struck with gouges

I made minor adaptations to his layout, but the bulk of the planning was his. One thing I knew from my first brief attempt is that this is not V-tool outlining. So we struck this way & that with different-sized gouges to incise all the arcs. Then fill in the middle with flowers. Our carvings fit between margins 4 1/2” apart - and the spacing worked out so five large circles spanned across the box fronts. If you want to tackle it, these numbers work. The smaller circles are about 5/8” in diameter. I struck mine with a gouge, instead of using a compass to outline them. I think Isaac’s spacing was 3 11/16” center-to-center. I couldn’t be bothered, so shifted it to 3 3/4”. Then we struck centerlines between the large circles, (through the small ones) - to align the large leaf forms that run behind the pattern.