Carving Roman Acanthus Leaf

A Roman acanthus leaf is the Greek leaf made more elaborate, the way I teach it here. Same plant, more movement in it and many more pipes, carved in relief on a block about six inches by eight (about 15 by 20 cm). The acanthus leaf comes in many forms, and later ones get even more elaborate.

Have you carved a Greek leaf already and wanted more movement in it? Does the word Roman make you picture something bigger than what you have carved so far? Then clear the bench and find that block. We start with a ruler and ten parts.

One warning before we start. I don't want to entertain you. I would like you to do what I'm doing, just the same as you would three hundred years ago in any woodcarving shop, where the master works and you repeat what he does.

What you will carve in sixteen lessons

• A grid of ten by ten, with the whole leaf drawn on it and both halves the same.
• Setting in, above a background line marked at a quarter inch (6 mm).
• Concaves inside the leaves.
• Pipes and eyes, far more than on the Greek leaf, plus returns on the eyes.
• Undercuts late in the course, some leaves almost paper thin.
• Then knife bevels on the edges, a small step, and beads at the very end.

What makes an acanthus leaf Roman rather than Greek?

More elaboration on the same plant. The rest is history, and I am a carver, so let me give it the way I tell it in lesson 1, as my own understanding.

When I say Roman style, it cannot be just the one Roman style. The Roman Empire ran half a thousand years, and most of its architectural details came from Greece, from Greek architects. At the beginning you can't even see the difference between the two leaves. They just copied it.

Later they started to beautify the Greek leaf, with more movements, more subdivisions and a lot more pipes, and the leaf structure got a lot more complicated. The plant is still the same. It's a bear claw, just developed.

One good thing about the Roman Empire, as I put it in that lesson. Whenever they conquered new areas, they tried to learn something new, and they adapted it to their own culture.

We also have a short article on the blog, Greek vs Roman acanthus, if you want the two styles side by side. Here we carve one.

Why are the tips of a Roman leaf round?

Sharp points are normal on a Greek leaf and on later leaves. On the Roman one the end is more roundy, and lesson 16 shows it. It still has a little point, but not much.

On this panel I rounded one of them with a number 6, 14 mm (about half an inch), because the way it was, it just didn't look too appealing to me.

Why is the Roman volute angled instead of straight?

A more ancient, Greek style volute would be straight, and it reads just straight up and down. The one on this panel is angled, with centers sticking out, and it's a little more complicated than you think.

And it is not a full volute. It is a relief carving volute, and it makes sense only when you look straight at it, not from the side view. But still, it has to look three-dimensional. So in lesson 1 I take a little time just trying to figure out my lines.

Those raised centers need a name, and I don't know the best one. They look like the end of an egg, so in lesson 2 I just call them eggs.

One habit for any line you carve to. Don't just push a chisel into it. You create pressure and smash the fibers, and it looks good until you look tomorrow, when those fibers come back and it looks like a really rough cut. So I make a relief cut first, in lesson 16 with a number 8 about 1/8 inch (3 mm), though any V tool will do.

What is the concave inside a Roman leaf?

A hollow carved on the inside of the leaves, and in lesson 6 I put it like this. A Roman acanthus has to have a concave on the inside of those leaves. Well, it doesn't have to have, don't get me wrong, but I would like to stay authentic to the history in this case.

I can't say most of them have it, because I didn't see all of them. But whatever I could find in the history books and the pictures online, ancient pictures and so on, they all have that concave.

My first one is a number 9, 10 mm or 3/8 inch. An 8 works, even a 7.

What is the difference between a chisel, a gouge and a veiner?

The sweep decides the name. Pretty much only number one is a chisel. The gouges usually go up to number nine, and a number nine rolled on a board makes a perfect round. After nine come the veiners, starting with number 11, a half round extended all the way up into a U shape.

V tools are number 12 up to about 16, and they come at 60, 45 or 35 degrees. Number 17 is also counted as a V tool. No V tool has a really sharp bottom. Down there is always a small gouge, and the 17 just has a bigger one. I undercut and clean with a 17 at 6 mm (1/4 in) in lesson 16, and I have a smaller one at 3 mm.

Learn what the number means. Some people call all the tools gouges or chisels in the wood carving world, and it's not necessarily true.

How do you lay out a Roman acanthus on a ten by ten grid?

Split the block into ten equal parts across and ten equal parts down, then build the whole design on that grid. I call it the ten parts division. Almost mathematical, so easy.

First the middle lines. On the eight-inch side mine land at four inches and four inches. Rule ten parts along each edge, number your lines so you can find the right space again when you draw, and set a border you will not cross, about 10 mm (3/8 in) at the top and about 3 mm (1/8 in) at the sides.

Then one mark. From those ten parts I count about six and mark it, and in lesson 5 I use the same six of ten to find the edge of an eye. That is a really good representation of a golden ratio, or golden rule, and it's easy to calculate.

Sometimes I start with the flow line, sometimes with the eyes. On this panel the eyes came first, and I worked out how many I need from the original Roman design. Flow lines and pipe lines all run to the center.

Be accurate, but not to the extreme. A human being does this carving, not a machine, and you have to have some imperfections, or it's going to look too plasticky. Please make sure it still looks human-like.

Before any tool touches it I shade the paper with charcoal pencils, black for the low and white for the high. It shows me where to carve and which leaves go one underneath another. You don't have to do it. It's just for myself.

If that grid makes sense to you now, the whole drawing is in lesson 1 and the sheet is on the drawing download page. When you are ready to carve along with me, the tuition page says how Access works.

Why does the Roman leaf carry so many more pipes?

The Romans added a lot more pipes to the Greek leaf, the way I tell it in lesson 1. I mark mine with a red pen just to make sure I see those pipes, and on this panel there are lots. You just can't go wrong with those pipes on an acanthus.

Underneath, the arithmetic stays simple. The main leaf divisions go in three, and the small sections are subdivided even more in threes. More pipes, more eyes.

Later, in lesson 12, the eyes get a return. By they, I mean the artists and sculptors in history. They added some return on those eyes, so it looks like it's coming from inside out. The return was resurrected in Renaissance time, I add in lesson 13, and on Rococo work you will see lots of them.

My next pair of returns, in lesson 13, is bigger, about three quarters of an inch (20 mm), because there is such a thing as a law of progression or rhythm. The same element grows toward the bottom.

Round each pipe, because it's a pipe and it's supposed to look round. I also like the pipes a little higher than the middle part. They're not really higher. They just appear that way.

Does a Roman acanthus have to be symmetrical?

This one is. It's the kind of symmetrical leaf you find a lot of times on capitals, and also on furniture, and it's really useful for furniture.

I tell you in lesson 2 that I love that type. The Greek and Roman and Byzantine carvers, and the later European ones too, all used it in different forms, and even now lots of furniture makers still decorate with it.

Once one side is done, I work the other side right away, doing the same cut. If it's not exactly the same, don't worry about it. I keep an eye on how low I go in lesson 13, because both sides are supposed to match. Check and recheck.

How big is the block and how deep does the carving go?

About six inches by eight, one inch and seven eighths thick, which is 47.5 mm. With a marking gauge set tight at about a quarter inch (6 mm) I mark the background on all four sides, and about an eighth of an inch (3 mm) above it I mark the rough background.

Depth comes in stages. The sections in lesson 5 go down three eighths of an inch, 10 mm, or deeper if you wish, and I went half an inch, about 13 mm.

Every wall that sets a section goes straight down. Don't undercut, don't angle it. The reason, which I give in lesson 4, is simple. It makes it much easier later on to find the original design.

None of that gets measured while I carve. I'm just eyeballing, because most of that material is going to be gone anyway.

Which gouges does this panel actually need?

You can get by with a minimum amount of tools, people say. I don't really support that idea. The true master can use only one gouge, and I've done it, one gouge and one knife. But it still limits you.

Grinling Gibbons is one of my heroes. He would constantly collect tools, I say in lesson 7, and you can see the progression of his designs as the tools came. Some carvers say they use ten or twelve tools on a regular basis. Maybe. It's not my case.

Your tools can differ from mine. Any V tool will work, 60 degrees or 45. Whatever small gouge you have will still work. Any other brand will do for the tiny Dockyard I use on the eyes.

I'm using Ashley Iles tools, and I really love Ashley Iles. But one of my favorites is a number 7, three quarters of an inch (20 mm), and it's unbranded, so you can't buy it. That was the first gouge my teacher gave me.

Sharpness is not up for debate. The tools have to be sharp. That's the biggest secret of the really deep excavations. My teacher would say to me, there is no such thing as a bad wood, only dull tools.

Some species are almost impossible to carve, of course. But if you complain about walnut, cherry or basswood, the problem is not the wood, the problem is the tool. Cherry and walnut hold the detail really nicely, and basswood holds it too, as long as you don't press too much and don't make cuts you don't need.

Sharpening has its own course, Carving Tool Sharpening, and the strop shows up in lesson 6. More stropping on the inside of the tool than on the outside.

How much do you undercut a Roman leaf?

Until the leaves are almost paper thin, at times, and usually not right away. I really like to go all the way to the extreme.

Some people don't like extreme undercutting at all, actually, and nothing is wrong with that if you don't like it. A leaf like that is fragile and you can easily break it. But like I said before, you can break anything.

The timing has a reason, and you see it in lesson 9. If I dig near a leaf, I can hit the points, and if it's not undercut, I'm not going to break it. If it's an extreme undercut already, I'll break it for sure. So undercutting is done later in the process.

Some places stay solid on purpose. The central part in lesson 8 should not be undercut, just straight down. And in lesson 11, before I make my final undercut, I keep some meat, because that is what I need for the reference.

For the deepest ones I lay a number 17 on its flat side. With a V tool that point would look sharp, but the 17 is a little round on the inside. It just gives me a softer look.

And it all comes back to light and shadow. Carving is all about the smallest, tiniest details, because every cut, every move produces some type of shadow. That's why I like that vise. I constantly rotate it to see the panel under different lights, and it tells me whether to carve deeper or not.

One safety rule goes with deep work. Never hold your tool in the air. Support your hand and you control the tool much better. And yes, I've cut myself, multiple times.

Here is something I believe. On historical pieces people often didn't even worry about deep undercutting, and it wasn't by design. It's a lot quicker not to undercut extremely, and everyone wants to get paid.

Why is there no sandpaper?

You leave the chisel marks, because they are what makes a carving beautiful. Most carvings in England and Germany are not really smooth, I say in lesson 3, because that is in the culture. When you see a really smooth carving, the carver probably sanded it completely.

I'll be honest, since you will watch it happen. Near the end one area looked kind of rough to me. I told you I don't like to use sandpaper, but I cheated with 80 grit, just a little bit, to see what marks it leaves. It didn't look right, so I had to clean it.

If an edge gets too fragile, there is a way to make it more stable. I usually don't use it, but you could. I explain it in lesson 11. You dilute some yellow carpenter's glue with water, more water than glue, and it goes into the fragile parts.

Your hands darken the wood as you work. It doesn't matter how clean they are, there are still some oils in your hands, and when you touch the wood, oxidation happens, like a natural patina. So at the later stage I like to use painter's gloves.

The last stage is all small details. I clean every edge with a tiny knife bevel, a sixteenth of an inch or even less, like a 32nd or 1 mm, and it makes the leaf look more classical. Then I add a small step, the kind you often see on a Roman ogee, about a sixteenth of an inch. That detail makes the whole world of difference.

Then the beads, three round ones. I found one of the pictures of a Roman acanthus online and liked what they made of those volutes. Beads are probably some of the oldest forms of architectural detail, and there are lots of applications for them.

How is this Roman acanthus course put together?

Sixteen lessons plus a drawing download. It starts with a bare grid and ends with a finished panel. The drawing download page has the sheet, and lesson 1 is the drawing itself, grid first, then eyes, flow lines and the angled volutes.

Lesson 2 is the stage called setting in, with a big number 8 by Ashley Iles, one inch (25 mm). Straight down cuts keep the overall picture in lesson 3, and by lesson 4 the center is the high spot while the sides run downhill. The sections go down in lesson 5, and the eyes are found again.

From lesson 6 on, the hollows begin, with the first concave and the tiny Dockyard for the eyes. Then lesson 7 is where I talk about tools and Grinling Gibbons. The back bends come out in lesson 8, and I read the stamp on a Pfeil one marked 28. The 2 means back bend, the 8 is the sweep, and the 6 after it is 6 mm.

Lesson 9 makes the first undercuts on the upper part, and lesson 10 is where I repeat my teacher's line about bad wood. Glue for thin edges is in lesson 11. Then lesson 12 adds the return on the eyes and brings out a number 11 veiner only 1 mm wide, and in lesson 13 the returns grow toward the bottom. With lesson 14 I go under tiny details with a micro veiner about half a millimeter wide.

Then life happened. There was a time gap between the lessons. I moved to another location and became a grandfather, and in lesson 15 I come back to the panel. In that lesson I get too close to an edge, because I got too excited, and I fix it with an extra notch.

The longest by far is lesson 16, where the panel gets finished. It covers a fingernail design down the middle, tool numbers, edge bevels, a step and beads. I break a piece in it and glue it back.

When I started this school, I promised I would teach you the way I do it, and most of my carvings I do just like what you see here. I taught one big class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, and the piece from that class shows up in lesson 6. Ask me anything as you go. I read my comments, and I answer them.

Other acanthus courses sit next to this one, the Greek acanthus, the Corinthian acanthus, the Byzantine acanthus and acanthus over moldings.

My father said to me that repetition is a mother of knowledge, knowledge is a mother of wisdom, and wisdom is a mother of understanding. That's why I'm always repeating.

So. Is there a block of six by eight in your shop? Could you rule ten lines across it tonight? Then begin with lesson 1, and when you want the rest, start here.

Shall we carve?