Guest editor Kevin Alviti shows how to adorn furniture with hand-carved decorations
Carving strapwork is a remarkably easy way to add decoration to your furniture. Its sheer ‘busyness’ lends itself to hand carving and using only a few techniques, the carving builds into something that people can’t help but be impressed by. Strapwork is designed to look (loosely) like the leather or metal straps that used to decorate items in the past. I became interested in strapwork carving after seeing Peter Follansbee’s work in his book Joiner’s Work. His mantra of ‘no blank space’ becomes a work of art when used on his carved boxes and chests.
It’s also easy to see how you can adapt this style of carving to fill drawer fronts or panels on furniture. Using this carving, it’s easy to make relatively simple pieces look far more impressive. Strapwork dates back a long way, and its origins can be seen in Islamic geometric patterns called ‘girih’, which were used heavily in architecture. There are even some surviving forms of this, carved in wood that dates back to the 13th century in a mosque in Cairo. Influences can also be seen in Celtic knotwork and key patterns.
Once you start to look for strapwork you will pick it out more frequently. It was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries in England, used on everything from ceilings and door frames to blanket chests, and had a revival in the 19th century. The piece I decided to carve for this article was for a workbench that would become a sharpening station in my workshop. It’s the first thing you see as you walk into my shop and, as well as adding some beauty to where I work, it would make a great talking piece for any customers who visited. It was also a great antidote to the perfect storm that was a third lockdown and home schooling my three children.
Things you will need
This is an approximate list, as lots of my tools have had many owners and generations of use. I have just used a chart to roughly figure out what size and sweeps they are:
Tools
- No.6, 25mm
- No.8, 10mm
- No.8, 19mm
- No.6, 13mm
- No.5, 20mm
- No.7, 25mm
- No.7, 18mm
- No.8, 7mm
- No.5, 7mm
- No.3, 16mm
- No.3, 5mm fishtail gouge
- No.3, 5mm bent fishtail gouge
- 6mm straight chisel
- 16mm straight chisel
- Carving punch – hollow circle
Initial layout
Arguably the hardest part of this carving is the layout. The design is so busy it’s easy to get lost and not know whether you’re supposed to remove wood or leave it. For this reason, I tend to lay out and carve in stages. I use a pencil for all my laying out – I know in the past they would have scored the lines, but this way it allows me to correct mistakes easily and the lines can be rubbed away at the end.
I also know that the logical and fastest way of doing this would be to strike all the lines then remove the background, but my brain doesn’t always work like that, and I like to break up all long activities if I can. However, I can see that is probably how it used to be done for speed and efficiency’s sake. With this type of carving, it’s important to make sure that the layout you decide upon works with your tools. The curves of the chisel need to match the curves you lay out, as it is curves that are created from a strike of the mallet, rather than a V-tool, so the tools really are the carving in this case. It is really easy to tweak the design to suit the tools you already have.
To start with, draw on centre lines – as this is a symmetrical piece this helps keeps everything in line. Then mark out a grid of squares – in this case the grid is 60mm. Dividers or a compass are ideal to make sure everything is the same. I’ve allowed enough room on the top and bottom for a border. Lay the pinwheels out next as they’re what the eye is drawn to. For the design I’m following I have a space of two uprights between each one. I have the diameter of these circles as roughly two-thirds the width of the grid I’ve just laid out. I’d recommend setting the thickness of the ‘straps’ to the width of chisel that you already own. I have mine as 6mm but wider would work well on a bigger design.
Draw these lines on to the work lightly. The main thing now is to be consistent and make sure the lines all ‘eye’ through. Nothing has to be perfect as it’s such a busy design that the eye will forgive a fair amount of variation before it notices anything, but having straight and true lines is key to this looking right.
Carving the design
Having the main circles marked out with their strapwork means that these can now be struck as well. Match your gouges to the curves and work your way around the circle (I used a No.5, 18mm), being careful not to carve across the strap lines. A large gouge (such as a No.5, 30mm) is useful here but a smaller one will work just as well of the same sweep.
Mark a line a third of the way up all the straps that don’t line up with the circles. Strike across these with your 6mm straight chisel. This is the underside of the U section. The chisel I use for this is double bevelled, but a normal chisel will be fine if the bevelled edge is kept to the waste side. Then come down either side of the strap line for one strike before going perpendicular again for another.
Then, taking a large gouge (in this case a No.6, 25mm), join the end of that cut to the line drawn as a margin. With each strike I work up the carving in turn, making the same cut on each part of the design. That way the carving systematically starts to come together and mistakes are less likely (but far from impossible). The design then needs to be repeated above the first to create the ‘straps’, it doesn’t need to be perfect but make sure that any over-cutting is on the waste side of the carving. The centre part should meet to create a frame.
Take a smaller chisel, such as a No.6, 16mm, and strike the shape of the small leaves. It’s up to you if you decide to remove the waste here at this point and lower the background. I do sometimes purely so it fixes in my mind which are to be the solid parts and which are to be removed. For the background on this piece, I’m going for a heavily tooled look where the gouge marks can be seen, but it could be taken back so it’s smooth or textured with punches.
The two ends then need their leaves carving in place. Again, as this is all struck from the shape of the gouges, you might find that you need quite a few dif ferent sizes. A smaller chisel of the right curve can easily be used, it just needs to be struck and moved multiple times, but this is obviously more work for you. Sketching this out to get the leaves roughly similar before striking the lines can also be done, but once you get your eye in it’s fairly easy to make them consistent.
Mark up the smaller circles between the larger ones and then mark the centre between them. On my design, this is a simple diamond carved with four strikes of a No 6, 13mm gouge and, with the waste removed, this forms the start of the fleur-de-lis in the middle panel.
From that centre diamond get a slightly tighter curved gouge (I used a No.8, 10mm) half the thickness of the strap away and mark out an almost complete circle shape, then with a larger tight gouge – in this case a carpenter’s paring gouge (around a No.8, 19mm) – mark the bottom leaf and bring the line so it finishes before the centre. The upper part of the leaf uses a slightly straighter gouge (a No.5, 20mm) and joins at the top.
With this marked out it’s time to remove the background. A sharp tool and good control is needed here so as not to slip into the narrow straps which would be easily damaged at this stage. I try to use hand pressure only, using both hands, to remove the waste. A smaller, bent fishtail chisel is useful here for getting the hard-to-reach waste bits out. I try to use matching homemade leather slips as often as possible to keep them sharp.
Once the background is taken back, it’s time to add in some detail. Veins can be added to leaves, again with strikes of the chisel, and a small cut behind the strike to remove a small sliver of wood to create a shadow detail. The larger circles can be dealt with in a number of ways, but a simple pin wheel is easiest. Ease the edge nearest against the inside line; then, taking a gouge large enough to go from the centre to the edge (such as a No.7, 25mm), strike five impressions spaced evenly around the circle. Selecting a slightly shallower sweep gouge (No.5, 20mm), remove a small ‘c’ shape from behind the first cut.
This creates the shadow detail. You could also carve small rosettes in their place if you felt that a pinwheel was too simple. Some detail can also be added with punches. A large nail punch can be used effectively but there are speciality punches for carvers that can add a variety of shapes and patterns which are easily punched into the work. Used correctly they can really break up the carving and add in some easy detail. A circle works well, punched into the design at set points, it helps to add detail to the straps.
Finishing
To finish, simply use boiled linseed oil applied with a rag and a brush into the details and then remove any excess with a dry, lint-free rag. I built up a number of layers over a period of days, as I was taught ‘an oil finish is never finished’ so I will try to remember to treat this work a few times this year.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF KEVIN ALVITI