Chamomile and Bow Rosette

I think this detail is small and doable, and not complicated. And you can take parts of it, a rosette or some leaves, and put them on furniture.

Have you ever finished a whole panel and then stalled on one detail in the middle of it? Do you own six gouges and think that rules you out of work like this? I did the first piece of this pair with regular tools, nothing special.

This piece came out of my Venetian room. One detail out of a much bigger project, and I filmed it alone because hunting for one ornament inside a long build is hard.

What is a chamomile and bow rosette?

This ornament is a small carved panel piece built from three parts. An oval flower head ringed with beads, a ribbon bow sitting above it, and two sprays of foliage and berries falling away from the sides. Call it a rosette with a festoon hung off it.

Key takeaways

• Number 11s do most of this, from half a millimetre up, plus something flat for blending.
• Glue the blank to plywood through a sheet of printer paper. It holds hard, then splits clean when you tap it off.
• Shadow is the whole trick. When it is done it doesn't look like a 7/8 inch board, but it is.
• Model the bow in clay before you cut it. Mine took seconds.
• The two sides are not equal, on purpose. The edges wander too, and that is what makes it look organic.
• A carving wood blank at 22 mm, seven eighths of an inch, because I like the highest point of the rosette right there.

Where does a piece like this actually go?

Onto a panel, with mouldings, in pairs. Mine hangs above another element with mouldings hiding right behind some of the leaves, which is exactly why I raised the ends the way I did.

Two of these exist, left and right. They mirror each other, with some variations. And the two sides of each one are not equal. I drew it that way on purpose from the beginning, and it reads as organic instead of stamped out. This detail is part of the Venice Room.

You do not have to hang the leaves downward either. Run them sideways and the same detail sits on a picture frame or a piece of furniture.

What holds a small blank while you cut it?

Glue it to a scrap of plywood through a sheet of ordinary printer paper. Spray adhesive on the board, paper down, spray again, blank on top. Half inch plywood, 12 mm.

It is not wise to fasten a small piece straight to the bench. The paper sandwich holds tighter than you expect and then splits along the paper when you tap a chisel in from the side.

Use a medium strength adhesive, not the strongest one on the shelf. I reach for Loctite. Titebond works too, it is just harder to clean. What you want is a spray that actually sprays, because some of them just spit all over.

Does that sound too weak for real work? The four foot lion heads in one of my other classes were held on paper and plywood, nothing else.

Which tools really cut this ornament?

One family of gouges carries almost this entire piece, and it is the number 11. I just got three new ones in my own line, at 0.5 mm, one millimetre and three.

Tool	What it does here	Size	Why I reach for it
Number 11	Digs the deep shadow around the stems and petals	0.5 mm	I use it on all kinds of projects
Number 8	Rings the flower centre with a crowd of tiny chops	1.5 mm	Small enough that those cuts can crowd together
Number 1	Refines the middle, cleans it, rounds the cuts over	1.6 mm	Tiny, and the middle part breaks really easily
Number 7	Knocks the middle of the oval into a dome	20 mm	Any flatter tool works, but it gives good roundness
Number 9	Opens the two holes that turn wood into a bow	6 mm	A drill works too, I just don't need one

That smallest one I just love. Members who have been with me a long time know I use it all the time, on furniture and on ornamental work.

I do use two antique short bends for the flower twists. The bend on them is only about six millimetres, a quarter inch, and you will probably never find one. Buy it if you do, even if the price hurts. I don't use them on camera most of the time, and I did the first piece with just regular tools, so nothing here depends on them.

The other tool worth naming is my own, a Sekira, built on the Gonzalez idea. A normal skew has one bevel. This one has several, so I can work off the heel, the middle or the point, and the point gets into corners a gouge almost can't. Your tools must be super sharp. If not, that is a sharpening problem.

What order do you cut a flower this small in?

Set the outline with a number 11, then cut the shadow before you shape anything. The flower is about 25 mm across, an inch, and it carries five petals. Three climb and curl back, two drop away.

Why not five the same? Five identical petals would be boring. Some up and some down gives me shadow too, beautiful shadow.

The centre gets a ring of straight down cuts from a number 8 at 1.5 mm, packed tight, so it looks like something growing out of the middle. Then cuts running inward. After that, with patience, a 1.6 mm chisel to round some of those cuts.

Most of that will never be seen by a human eye at normal distance. I do it anyway.

Roll the petals using a number 3 around 6 mm. The middle of each petal stays high, like a small hill, and you hollow underneath the wavy edge so the light has somewhere to fall. Do not chase a perfect edge. Look at a real flower up close and nothing about it is even.

What do you do when the middle keeps snapping off?

Put a couple drops of thin cyanoacrylate right in the centre and let it soak in. It really firms up the fibres.

One condition. Only do that if the piece is going under paint, lacquer or shellac. This one is paint grade.

It did not save mine. I lost the centre anyway and planned a new one a little lower. That happens, and it is not a disaster.

Why does every leaf tuck under its neighbour?

Overlap gives you shadow movement, and shadow is what I'm after. Each leaf tucks under its neighbour, each berry sits on a stem, and every stem stops in the middle of its element rather than running to the tip.

Most leaves get the same section. Convex, then concave either side, then a groove down the middle, then blend it until no facet survives. Back bent gouges earn their keep here.

Watch the grain when you undercut, because if you push from the wrong side, it breaks. Come at it from the other direction and take less.

Rounding them is almost like working with grapes. For more of this kind of work, there is also a flower rosette.

Why does a carved bow give people trouble?

Squeeze one out of plasticine first. A bow is 3D, and after teaching for a while, even in person classes, I found some people have a problem with it.

The clay took me a couple of seconds and it does not need to be pretty. All it has to show you is the twist. Which loop crosses over, which slides under, where the ribbon turns back. Then you look at your lump of clay instead of guessing, and the wood stops being frightening.

Open the two centres with a 6 mm sweep. Drilling works too. Two holes, and the thing already reads as a bow before you have shaped anything.

Then keep the two sides different. On mine, one side runs downhill and returns, and the other drops and climbs. That creates a different movement.

What did Grinling Gibbons do to a bow that most carvers skip?

He created cuts perpendicular to the main lines. Look at the ribbons in his work. Cuts run across the main movement, and those are what make a flat ribbon turn in space.

I cut those with a 10 mm sweep, near enough three eighths, changing direction between the two sides. It already looks like a bow without them. Most of you will probably leave it there. I go the extra mile.

If you want to see the real thing rather than my version, the V and A collection is the place, and I teach a whole Gibbons class of my own.

What spaces a row of beads evenly by hand?

Walk them round with calipers and hide the error in one place. Leave a 3 mm border, an eighth of an inch, then make each bead about 6 mm, a quarter inch.

Set the calipers off the beads you already cut on the first piece, then step around the oval. They will not come out exactly even. Mine finished about half a millimetre out, and I hid the difference at the point where the two runs meet.

The cuts themselves are knife work. Angle the blade slightly, pull the cut, then flip the knife and lift a chip about a millimetre and a half off the other side. That frees the border from the body. Then round each bead with a 6 mm number 8, one direction, back the other way, and finally a cut running into the middle.

Where is the centre of a shape you already carved?

A strip of paper sometimes beats calipers. Drywall seam tape from any hardware store is stiff enough to hold a line and thin enough to slide under an undercut where some calipers will not go.

Mark a reference on the edge, flip the strip, mark the other side, and the centre sits between your two marks. Four reference points and you have both axes. Paper twists much easier than a ruler, even on a shape that already carries a dome.

Transfer the drawing with a quarter of the pattern and carbon paper, keeping the two lines you just found. All the transfer method costs you is a black mess to clean up afterwards.

Why bother texturing the background?

A flat ground and a carved ornament read as one lump until you break the ground up. Punch it and the difference is enormous, far more than the effort deserves.

I use punches and a plain carpenter's hammer, because the punch is steel and I don't want to damage my mallet on it. A mallet works too, if you don't mind that. Some of mine are modified. I ground a two row punch down to a single row and filed a couple of notches into it, which lets me reach in under an undercut where a full face will not fit.

What stops an undercut ruining hours of work?

Take the shadow from the front first, then pop the piece off the paper and thin it from the back. Three ways in, and I use all of them on one piece.

Lay a number 11 on its side and it clears the bulk. Switch to a 6 mm number 5 and you slice in an arc, like working a dome, which moves a surprising amount at once. The Sekira point reaches the small triangles that are almost impossible with a gouge.

Two rules and I mean both of them. Never put your hand in front of the tool, because it will slip and you will find out why I say it. And once the piece is off the board, use smaller tools than you think you need, hold it in your fingers rather than clamping it, and take less each pass. One mistake on the back side can break it after hours of work.

Leave a glue line. Whatever you thin, keep a flat area for mounting, or you will have a beautiful ornament and no way to attach it.

Is this a first project or a fifth?

I think it's easy enough to do. It is not a complicated piece, but if you are brand new, start with the basics. Anyone who has finished a plate with a knife or a simple antique rosette, you are ready.

And you don't have to repeat exactly what I do. Make the decision ahead of time what you would like to see, then be as creative as you wish.

Mine goes under paint, so I sand. Sandpaper at 180 or 240 grit, not lower on the face, then Abranet at 240 or even 320. If sanding offends you, spend the time with a flat gouge instead. Neither answer is wrong.

So there is a panel somewhere in your shop with a gap in the middle of it. What goes in that gap? Come and carve it with me, and bring the gouges you already own. Shall we carve?