Carving Strapwork videos available now

through vimeo on demand

Exeter pattern

My newest carving video - “Carving 17th-century Strapwork Patterns” is now available on vimeo-on-demand. “Strapwork” is a name given to designs that include narrow vertical and horizontal bands or “straps” connecting different elements of the design - round “rosettes”, fleur-de-lis, leafy clusters, etc. The particular strapwork patterns presented in this series stem from the Ipswich, Massachusetts shop of Thomas Dennis and from Devon in England, specifically around the city of Exeter. The time period spans the whole 17th century.

Its running time is just over 3 hours, broken into six videos - after discussing the layout and the tools, the videos show how I carved 3 different versions of this pattern. All related, but each distinct. Between the three box fronts, you’ll see a full range of the vocabulary of strapwork patterns.

• Introduction & a look at the gouges used

• Incising the layout

• Background removal & details (those two videos contain the first full pattern, a box front from Thomas Dennis’s shop)

• A second Ipswich/Thomas Dennis box front

• A version of strapwork from Exeter, Devon

• A slideshow about the historic examples and the research (starting in 1892!) concerning this group of furniture, specifically this pattern.

Here’s a bit of a trailer -

The section on gouges explains how I designate the different carving gouges I use - a combination of new and antique tools, many of which have no number-designation to define the amount of curvature. Jeff Lefkowitz & I collaborated on a series of drawings a few years back & used a system I first saw in the work of Hans Karlsson, blacksmith. The “sweep” is the size circle the gouge is a segment of - the width is simple that across the tool’s cutting edge. So each time I pick up a tool a text box appears that might say “1 3/8” sweep, 3/4” wide.” I apologize in advance for my metric readers/viewers, you’ll have to provide your own conversions. I had enough work catching each tool as it came into play. Some of these patterns use a lot of gouges, at one count 12 different gouges, plus a few chisels.

The price for the series is $65.00 - the link is here https://vimeo.com/ondemand/follansbeestrapwork

But paid subscribers to the blog get a discount of 20% - below the paywall on this post is the discount code - follow the prompts to order the videos, then enter the promo code.