Grinling Gibbons – Class in Maine

A Gibbons style carving is layered high relief, taken from two 2 inch slabs that wrap into one another instead of stacking flat. You dome the lower layer convex where the two meet, then hollow the back of the upper one so it settles down over that dome. After that comes the long part, digging out dark spots until the whole thing starts to look light.

Ever look at a Gibbons panel in a photograph and wonder how the flowers float that far off the board? And how two layers of wood can end up looking like one? Part of the answer comes in the first two classes, before any petal exists.

Each layer gets shaped to the other one. I called that the biggest secret of the Gibbons style, out loud, in the first class. A student had asked how the two layers would look in a side view.

Eighteen classes and a final assessment, all on one original Gibbons design, and the early ones were filmed live in Maine with real students asking real questions, so you hear the questions. I break one of the handles on my own blank in class 2. The Maine class was five days, really four and a half days of carving, and I did not film the whole thing. So in class 9 I brought the panel home and kept going. Near the end of class 18 the landscapers showed up to trim my trees right in the middle of filming, and that is on the tape too.

What I settle before the first pass

Two slabs of 2 inch stock, 50.8 mm, for both carved layers. Background is a separate 1 inch (25 mm) board.

The panel came out wider than the original. His picture is narrow and long, but we used the whole block of wood, and the workshop in Maine was able to get us some wider stock.

Design goes on clear plastic sheet, in two Sharpie colors. Blue means lower. Red means upper.

One element is the main one. Everything else on the board is there to hold it up.

The legs and the handle stay untouched until class 6, when I take the handles out on the band saw. They are what you clamp to when you flip the piece over.

What splits a Gibbons design into layers?

Trace it twice on clear plastic sheet, once for each layer. I like the plastic for a reason. Say you draw one side of a design, and the second side has to be exactly the same. You just flip the plastic over, and there it is, going the opposite direction.

Then two Sharpie colors. Blue for everything sitting on the lower layer, red for everything on the upper. Study the original and mark each flower, each leaf, each stem into one camp or the other. Gibbons worked in two layers here, and the majority of the carving lives on the first.

Write the words on the sheets as well. Upper on one, lower on the other. It looks like something you would never need until somebody lays a sheet upside down and traces it the wrong way. I have seen people do it.

Some parts of the original get simplified, and I want to be straight about why. He has a couple of parsley leaves and some tulips in there, and we simplify those slightly, just because of the limitation of the tools we have. Back in class 2 I reminded the group that we work on his original design. So if somebody says it doesn't look nice, blame the guy who designed it. I'm not the one.

What makes a carving read as Grinling Gibbons?

Lightness. That is how I put it in class 17. Excavate as much as possible of those dark spots and you get a lightness effect. The carving is still solid, it is not paper thin, and I can prove it to you. But when you look at it, it feels like it's becoming lighter and lighter.

So the more you excavate, the more you remove, the lighter it gets. In class 13 I opened a hole clean through, looked down from above, saw a dark spot, and said that's what I'm after, because it gives me an extra shadow. Then I said it's not enough for me.

He also mixed his flowers. Tulips, parsley leaves and a bunch of small filler flowers, all in one panel. One flower on mine is Venetian style instead, the kind I carve in the Venetian flowers rosette, and there are more flowers to carve in Hashemi flowers. We made that call together during the class in Maine.

The tulip has a story of its own. He was probably showing off that he was born in Holland, because people from Holland love tulips. That was my guess in class 7. The Wikipedia page on Gibbons says he was born to English parents in Holland, and it lists his work at Windsor Castle, Hampton Court Palace and St Paul's Cathedral.

You can go to those palaces in England and just look for yourself. I said that in class 11. In London, the Victoria and Albert Museum has his Stoning of St Stephen on display, and Petworth House in West Sussex has carvings by him too.

Where should the eye land first?

One element carries the panel and everything else works for it. Mine was a tulip. The high spots come first, back in class 2. The main guy, my tulip, stays as high as possible, so its surface is untouchable for now. A secondary guy sits somewhere else on the board, and the rest comes down, gradually.

Then there is the 60/40 rule. I put a line through one leaf in class 4, and it fell approximately on 60/40, the golden ratio, which is 38% and 62%. I don't think Grinling Gibbons really worried about that. But I think it's a good idea, just for the sake of remembering it.

And don't drop everything at once. Class 1 keeps about 7/8 of an inch to one inch there, 22 to 25 mm, and that lower part stays untouchable for now. Later on we go deeper.

Two more things about your hands, because this is where accuracy actually comes from. One hand always rests solidly on the board, never both floating in the air. And every pass is a rotation, a slice, not a shove. Raise the gouge high and start carving like that, and the tool goes in too deep.

I show only two steps at a time. But really try to understand the logic, and don't treat it like a driving lesson, where it's just push, stop, turn right. You have to know why you push that stop and why you turn right, because the traffic goes that direction.

How do two layers become one carving?

Convex on the lower layer, hollow on the back of the upper. Lay the two boards side by side, eyeball where they will overlap, and pencil that patch. Flip the upper board face down and excavate that patch from behind, no deeper than about half an inch (13 mm). I call it the zipper spot. The lower board gets the same patch domed outward instead.

Then the upper piece goes right on top of the first one and wraps around it. It is not just glued, the second layer on the first one. Even so, that fit is only a start. When I got the panel home from Maine and looked from the side, I could still see two layers that did not blend nicely, and blending them is the work of class 9.

One warning on that hollow, and I gave it more than once. Do not spoon it. Hold the gouge too high, drive it in, and you get deep spooning with no nice transition, and that makes a big problem later on. What you want is a beautiful gradual movement. Keep the tool low. Take small bites. If pushing forward starts to dig deeper, attack from the opposite direction.

Why leave the legs untouched?

Legs and the handle are what hold the piece when you turn it over. Students who took a class with me before know how much they matter.

Here is the sequence. You carve the front. Then, when it is time for the undercutting, you flip the whole thing and it stays on those legs. Now the back is facing you and you can attack from the backside. Write the word untouchable down if it helps. I told the class exactly that, and I also told them not to even think about touching those legs.

Same rule on the vise. Enough pressure to stop it walking, no more. Squeeze a two inch blank too hard in a vise and you can break a leg off, and later on you really need those legs.

How thick is the stock for this?

Two inches, 50.8 mm, for both carved layers, and the background is a separate one inch board underneath. Even so, class 12 ran short. I did not have enough thickness for one flower in his picture, and that is the problem, I said, so I have to work with what I have.

Gibbons himself used limewood for the carving and oak for the background, a darker oak, and both come up in class 10 and class 11. I know his story from multiple books, some of them antique ones, and most of those authors agree. Maybe I have oak in the shop. I didn't want to dig for it, but I had a piece of walnut, and I think it looks really nice on a darker background.

Class 6 is when the handles come off, on a band saw or a scroll saw. Be careful on the saw once the piece gets fragile.

Which tools does this actually need?

Where you are	What I have got in my hand	Size in inches	What it is doing right then
Roughing the layers	Number nine gouge at 20 mm, the bigger the better	Three quarters	Slopes from the inside toward the outside
Opening a deep spot	Number nine at 10 mm, turned in both directions	Three eighths	Lifts a plug out quicker than sawing
Doming each flower	Number seven at 14 mm, started on one corner	Just over half	Rounds the flowers up into domes
Undercutting a petal	Number eleven at 3 mm, flute toward eleven o clock	One eighth	Goes underneath, careful not to break it
Blending a small flower	Number three at 3 mm, Ashley Iles, Peter Benson collection	One eighth again	Blends it where a chisel works too
Holes between petals	Dockyard number eight or number nine at 1 mm	Under a sixteenth	Opens a hole right through the wood

Now the brands. My 6 mm number nine is an Auriou, a French brand. The detailing tools are Ashley Iles, the Peter Benson collection, and they are not micro tools. They are called detailing tools. The really tiny ones come from Dockyard, about a 16th of an inch (1.6 mm). My tiny mallet was made for me by Tim Yoder.

Early on, do not reach for tiny tools. The bigger tool is better every time while you are still removing mass. Once you work on details, though, you really have to get some detailing tools or micro tools, and that is where class 13 goes. There is a whole course about tools if your bench is still filling up, and a separate one on sharpening.

Sharpening gets a few lines here. For me a plain piece of leather is always better to strop on, with Mirror paste by Trend, and I strop inside and outside. Green paste and blue paste are really nice too, and they all do the job. When you are detailing and don't plan to use sandpaper or any other abrasive, give the tool a couple of strokes on the strop.

Where does the shadow come from?

Openings that go deep, and some go all the way through. A plug cut opens them fast. The plug cut in class 2 starts with a 10 mm number nine set right in the middle of the area to excavate. I turned it both directions, and out came the plug. Once the plug is out, you don't have to be too deep, maybe half an inch, and you carve toward it. It's actually quicker than any scroll saw.

I could go all the way through in a couple of minutes, but I wouldn't go through right away, because the workbench is under it. To open it right through, flip it over and work from the back side.

After that comes waviness. Class 8 is where I said I don't want to see my petals with a middle line straight like this, so I create some kind of movement. They really have to be wavy, then it looks nice. The middle of a petal bulges up, with a concave on one side and another concave on the other.

If any of that is making sense, the way in is the tuition page.

What finish goes on a piece like this?

Lacquer, shellac or maybe even wax, as long as it is a liquid wax. I left mine with the facets still showing. You could take care of every facet if you wanted to. There is more floral work in the floral and molding course.

Is this course right for a beginner?

It is an advanced piece. I say so on the last video, and it is not for everyone. But you are welcome even if you have never carved. Some of the people who took this class in person had pretty much never carved, and they got really good results. If you want a gentler start, there are first cuts for beginners and design principles, and the map of where to begin lays the whole order out.

One last thing. Most likely you are going to break it in a couple of spots, and it's okay. I broke mine too, and I'm all right with that. The mallet was a big mistake in class 14, and a moment later I said nobody's going to know that I just broke the thing. Well, except you and me, and the thousands of members of my school.

In the last video I asked to see some variations when you submit your work for the assignment, so it is more interesting. And run the photograph through something like TinyPNG before you upload it. I've got thousands of people, the database keeps growing, and big files are not good for the website.

Shall we carve?