Carving Byzantine Acanthus

Have you ever carved an acanthus leaf that stayed flat, no matter how much wood you took off it? Does your leaf sit on the board like a sticker instead of lifting away from it? So let us do the Byzantine one together. I am talking to you, right now, the same way I talked to the people standing at my bench in Maine.

That class ran in person and we filmed every hour of it. Ten leaves and one panel, with the wood stacked three layers deep because a single board simply cannot do this. My assistant Bill cut the plastic drop cloth for our templates that morning. Somebody brought me coffee and forgot the cookies, and I said so on camera.

A week is not enough time. I told them that on the first day and I will tell you the same. When the class ended I could still see six places on my own panel I wanted to keep working. Perfectly normal. Wood carving does not go faster because you want it to.

How is Byzantine acanthus different from Greek and Roman acanthus?

Byzantine carvers raised a rounded ridge on every lobe, where the Greek carved a crease and the Roman scooped a dish. Same plant, three answers. The Greeks made the inside of the leaf come to a crisp point. Rome softened that point into a dish. Then came Byzantium, which took the whole thing and pushed it up into the air.

Here is how I put it to the class that week, word for word. Greek acanthus leaf, it has a sharp V on inside. Roman acanthus leaf has a concave on inside. Byzantine acanthus leaf has a raised up convex, and we are working with Byzantine style.

They took it to an extreme. Not just a curve drawn on a surface, but real curvature carved into the three dimensional world, so the leaf turns and rolls and throws shadow from every side. Which is why a Byzantine leaf still carries across a whole church wall while a shallow one disappears at ten feet.

My exact words on day five were that once you can carve a Byzantine acanthus, all the other acanthus leaves are going to feel like a piece of cake.

Why does a Byzantine leaf need three layers of wood?

Three glued layers give the leaf enough thickness to roll over itself, and one flat board never will. The bottom layer holds the big movement. Above it, the middle layer carries the leaf that rolls across. A third goes on top when you want the true Byzantine height.

I use Titebond, the original or the number 2. Titebond 3 takes too long to dry for a class like this. Half an hour and you can already carve on it. Sign your name on the inside face before you glue, because nobody will ever see it again and you will know it is there.

Now the part that decides whether it looks like furniture or looks like plywood. You blend the seam. Keep carving across that glue line until it disappears, and the panel starts reading as one solid block of wood rather than a sandwich.

In old Byzantine work the top piece could be replaced if something broke, held with pegs or tacks. Later the Orthodox churches used screws from the back. I like knowing that. Somebody expected the thing to need fixing one day and built for it.

How do you lay out an acanthus leaf before you carve anything?

Draw the biggest movement first, straight onto the board, and let every smaller shape hang off that one line. One swirl. Divisions come next, inside it. I count eight movements on this design and they follow a Fibonacci run, one, two, three, five, so each one relates to the last instead of being spaced out like fence posts.

Everything flows to one center line. If a smaller leaf wanders off on its own the eye stops there and the whole panel dies. In wood carving you really have to be flowing. I repeat that rule until people get tired of hearing it.

Then I mark the drawing in color. Blue means concave, so that area gets hollowed. Orange means convex, so that area has to stand up above everything around it. Black is for lines that only explain something to me. Three markers and you can read your own board six days later without guessing.

Never chase a perfect drawing. My line to the class was to not worry about being perfect, but also not to drift away by a whole inch. Somewhere between those two you will find the leaf.

Can one drawing give you both halves of the leaf?

Trace the design onto a scrap of plastic drop cloth with a marker, then flip the plastic to get the mirror side for free. I call it the cheap man technique and I am not embarrassed about it. Flip it, flip it, flip it, and you could cover a whole church wall with one small drawing.

From the plastic it goes onto the wood through carbon paper with a ballpoint pen. Not a gel pen. A gel pen skates and skips and you end up pressing so hard you dent the blank. Good carbon paper lasts for years, and one sheet served that whole class. Abdul lent me his pen and never got it back.

Then you mount the blank. Spray glue on both faces, a sheet of ordinary paper in between, and press it down onto the backing board. No clamps. When the carving is finished the paper splits and the leaf lifts off clean.

I trust that joint completely. When I carved a pair of lions that measured 47 and 3/16 inches, about 1198 mm, the only thing holding them to the bench was glued paper.

Where does the gluing border go, and how wide?

Leave 19 mm, about 3/4 inch, of untouched wood all the way around the first layer so the next layer has something solid to sit on. You can get away with 16 mm, near 5/8 inch, but the wider border gives you more gluing surface and I would rather have it.

That border is no flat shelf. It runs with the movement, thick where the leaf is thick and thinning as it climbs. About 50 mm, two inches, at the tail end stays untouched and never gets undercut. It is the anchor for everything above it.

What gouges do you need to carve an acanthus leaf?

Four tools carry almost this entire panel, and the biggest one is a number 9 at 19 or 20 mm, which is 3/4 inch. That gouge does the roughing, the deep hollows and the background texture.

Next comes the 10 mm number 9, three eighths of an inch, for the concaves inside the leaf. Then a number 11 veiner at 3 mm, near 1/8 inch, which is the tool that carves every eye and every separation on this panel. It looks like a U. Small tool, and it does more work than anything else in the roll.

Ridges get rounded over with a flat number 2 at 10 or 12 mm, 3/8 to 1/2 inch. I also reach for a number 6 at 20 mm to clean facets, a number 7 at 14 mm for the S curves, and a number 11 at 1 mm for undercutting where the leaves overlap. A skew is one of the best tools you can own.

Hold it right or none of it matters. Never both hands on the handle. Your second hand belongs on the blade, near the edge, and you rotate the tool as you push so it slices instead of shoving. It is not a paint brush.

Why does bosting come before every detail?

Bosting is the roughing stage where you carve only the big shape and refuse to carve any detail at all. Outside leaves go downhill to about 10 mm, roughly three eighths. Sides stay full and fat, because you will need that wood later for undercutting.

The most common mistake I see is people working on details first. Then it is too late. They have a beautiful little eye carved in exactly the wrong place, and they will not remove it, and the whole leaf stays wrong around one pretty detail.

Keep the meat. We still need wood for the future development of the shape, and every millimeter you take now is a millimeter you cannot put back. Rotate the piece constantly. Do not be lazy about that, it is really important. Eli borrowed my Sharpie somewhere in here and never gave it back either. I called him Mishpocha and we carried on.

Dishing goes crossways to the grain, worked from both sides toward the middle, high spot blended into low spot. A flat number 6 cleans the facets afterward. My students hear one number over and over here, 10 mm, because 10 mm is the depth the first layer wants.

What are the eyes on an acanthus leaf?

An eye is the small teardrop opening where two leaves meet and one passes under the other. Mine run about 5 mm at most, near 3/16 inch. Draw it as a water drop, not as a circle, and it will look alive.

Two passes with the small veiner open one. First notch goes in one direction, second meets it, and the waste falls out. Roll the flute over toward 2 o'clock as you carve, and 10 o'clock on the mirrored side, so the overlap leans the way the leaf is traveling.

Then comes the part people get backward. The convex leaving that eye has to climb. I want to see the convex going uphill and never falling backward. A convex that falls back makes the leaf look tired, like it gave up halfway. When it climbs, the whole movement comes alive.

To force it, blend the transition with the flat gouge held upside down, and go deeper in the concave beside it. Deeper concave, higher convex. Whatever depth the hollow gains, the ridge beside it gains too.

Where the eyes sit is a decision, not an accident. I split a head of leaves roughly 60 to 40 rather than down the middle, and I flip that ratio on the inner leaves so nothing lines up with anything. Even spacing is what makes carved ornament look printed.

Each group of leaves also gets what I call a boat, with its own middle line running the length of it, and every eye you carve has to answer to that line. In Maine we argued about where one of them should end. I asked the room whether the boat should finish uphill or drop away, and they voted uphill, so uphill is what got carved.

What is the pipe on an acanthus leaf?

A pipe is the rounded ridge that runs out of an eye and up the lobe, and on a Byzantine leaf it is deliberately over exaggerated. Draw a center line out of every eye first. Blue on both sides, orange down the middle, then carve to your own marks.

Every pipe is born from two concaves. Carve the hollow on the left, carve the hollow on the right, and the wood standing between them is your pipe. Then the flat number two rounds the top of it until no facet is left anywhere on that ridge.

Smooth, wide, and pronounced. Byzantine work is known for exactly that shape, and the Italians did the same thing later in their own way. I said it out loud the moment one pipe came right. It was deep, and now it created the beautiful pipe.

Mind the family order too. Where a big form meets a small one, the big one always overlaps the small one, following the flow. Break that and the panel starts arguing with itself.

How deep should a relief carving be?

Deep enough that the shadow does the work, because on a Byzantine panel the shadow is the drawing. Go deeper here than feels comfortable. We are after all the shadow we can get.

That courage comes from the layers. We deliberately did not carve the first layer all the way through, so there is thickness left to spend. Students who left themselves only 6 mm, a quarter inch, spent the rest of the week working carefully around a mistake made on day one.

Shape the whole upper layer like a bowl turned upside down before you carve any detail into it. A dome. Everything after that is carved into a curved surface, which is exactly why the leaf keeps moving when you walk past it.

How do you carve holes through the leaf without a drill?

Carve a plug from the middle of the section using a number 9, then lift it away, then open the hole from both faces. No drill goes near this panel. A drill leaves a round mechanical wall that you then have to carve away anyway.

Before any of that, stab your relief lines. Three separations inside each leaf, a triangle drawn at every separation, and a few firm stabs with the 3 mm number 11 in each triangle. Waste comes out with the flat gouge, little by little.

Leave about a quarter inch, 6 mm, of wood between the ridge and the hole so nothing snaps while you are still working. Keep every bridge and support in place until the very end. Everything turns fragile fast once the light starts coming through it. Gary and John already had their first hole open before I had even finished explaining how to start one.

Look at one pierced eye next to a solid one and you will stop asking whether it is worth the risk. With that hole it looks better. When I turned the panel around in Maine the room went quiet.

Do you undercut a Byzantine leaf?

Yes, and the undercut is what lifts the leaf off its board and makes 25 mm of oak read like paper. Clamp the panel upside down and sweep with the number 9, working slowly, until you have brought every last edge of that leaf right out to nothing.

Leave 1 to 1.5 mm at the very edge, close to a sixteenth of an inch. The blend zone stays around 3 mm, an eighth of an inch. Any recessed circle behind the leaf goes no deeper than 3 mm either, sitting 6 to 10 mm, a quarter to 3/8 inch, in from the edge.

Undercut every overlap with the 1 mm number 11, flute rolled to 3 o'clock. The goal is airy and light. Overdo it and you will break it, and I have broken pieces on camera, in front of the whole class, more than once.

Never carve toward yourself unless you happen to be a dentist. I say that out loud every single class, and then I will tell you the truth, which is that I still carve toward myself sometimes and so does everybody who has done this long enough. The rule exists so the thought crosses your mind before the blade does.

Clean, clean, clean. The last hour of this whole panel goes on that, and it is the part people skip because the leaf already looks finished from three feet away.

One time I broke a lobe clean off and told them I was going to redesign it into a French acanthus, and that is probably how the French developed theirs anyway. By breaking stuff.

What do you do with the background board?

Texture the background by hand with a number 9 running across the grain, and leave one flat patch bare where the leaf will be glued. Give yourself about 25 mm, an inch, of margin inside the pencil outline so no texture shows past the leaf.

Position the leaf toward the golden ratio rather than dead center, trace around it in pencil, then texture everything outside that line. Grinling Gibbons used oak backgrounds for his work all the time. Cherry is good too. A darker ground makes a pale leaf jump forward.

Glue it down and walk away for half an hour. No clamp. Rub the leaf into the glue, set it, leave it alone. Now the last pass, and it is the one most people skip.

Kill the facets. Shave the last flat spots off the curves with a flat number 3, almost like using a razor, and burnish what is left with a scrap of the same wood. I never use sandpaper on this. Sandpaper is offensive to me, and I still love a finish that came off the chisel.

Was Byzantine acanthus ever left as bare wood?

Byzantine church carving of this kind was made to be gilded, and that is how I teach it. Nobody in a Byzantine church was looking at bare wood. The carving was the ground for the gold.

The old sequence still works. Red clay first, then Italian gesso, burnished with a pumice stone until the surface is glass. A thin oil, then the leaf itself goes down. When you burnish gold over that clay the leaf cracks in tiny lines and the red underneath shows through, and the whole thing warms up instead of looking like foil.

Which means the carving under the gold has to be clean. Gesso fills a small tear-out and then the gold sits on a lump. Every facet you leave is a facet you will see later, lit from the side, forever.

I have a commission waiting for me in a European castle, French limewood, the whole room gilded, drawn in an 18th century Italian style. That client has waited on me for years. I carve for a living and deadlines create real tension. There is nothing I can do to make that room arrive any sooner.

Can a beginner carve a Byzantine acanthus?

A patient beginner can finish this panel, but somebody who has already carved a Greek or Roman leaf will move through it much faster. The tools are simple. One number 9 plus a veiner will do most of it. What eats the week is deciding where a shape is going before you take any wood off.

I want you to understand why we do what we do, not just copy each move like a car doing 15 miles an hour behind the one in front, changing gear when he changes gear. When somebody asks me why the concave goes there and not two millimeters over, that is the week working.

Be careful with the sharp stuff. Never carve toward yourself unless you are a dentist. Then I will admit the truth, which is that I still carve toward myself sometimes, and so does everybody, and the rule exists so you think about it first.

Last year I spent a thousand dollars on rasps because other carvers use them and I felt like I was missing something. I still do not use them.

Twice during that week my gouge hit metal buried inside the wood. Something broke. I have no idea how metal gets in there and it was the first time it ever happened to me.

So. Would you rather carve a leaf that lies down on its board, or one that rolls up off it and pierces the light? One number 9. A small veiner. Your evenings for about a month, and that is the whole list. I still have six places on my own panel I mean to get back to.

Come carve the whole panel with me in Carving Byzantine Acanthus, ten lessons filmed in that Maine classroom. If you want the earlier steps of the family first, start with the Greek acanthus leaf, then the Roman acanthus leaf, and read how the Greek and Roman leaves differ before you draw anything.

Shall we carve?