Grinling Gibbons – Class in Maine

A Gibbons style carving is layered high relief, taken from two slabs of 2 inch basswood 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, most of the work is chasing shadow.

Ever look at a Gibbons panel in a photograph and wonder how the flowers float that far off the board? Or tried to copy one and ended up with a nice flat carving that looks glued together? The gap between those two things is one move, and it happens 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 on an original Gibbons design. The first eight were recorded live in Maine, with real students asking real questions, and you hear the questions. Then I took the panel home and filmed the rest there. Somewhere in there I break one of the handles on my own blank. At one point the landscapers turned up to trim my trees mid recording, 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 board.
• Finished carving measures 8 5/8 by 10 7/8 inches, which is 219 by 275 mm. Background runs 9 3/4 by 13 1/4, or 248 by 337 mm.
• Design goes on clear plastic sheet, in two Sharpie colours. 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 the handles come off 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. Plastic, not paper, and there is a good reason. When a design has a mirrored half, you flip the sheet over and trace the other side straight off the same drawing, and the two halves match without you drawing anything twice.

Then two Sharpie colours. 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. His parsley leaves and a couple of the tulips go finer than the tools most of us own, so we take the shape and lose a little of the fuss. The design underneath is still his. And if somebody says a passage does not look nice, I told the class to blame the guy who designed it. I'm not the one.

What makes a carving read as Grinling Gibbons?

Depth you cannot see the bottom of. Look down on my panel and the eye keeps falling into dark spots between the petals. Those spots are not painted on. Many of them are carved all the way through the wood.

So chasing shadow is the whole job. When I open a hole under a petal I am not removing wood for its own sake, I am buying one more dark spot. A stem that floats free in the air gives a beautiful shadow. Fragile, yes. Worth the risk to 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. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds his Stoning of St Stephen panel, and the Carved Room at Petworth House has his carving on the walls. You can go and look for yourself.

Where should the eye land first?

One element carries the panel and everything else works for it. Mine was a tulip. Pick yours before you touch the wood, because that choice decides every height on the board: your main element stays the highest thing there, a secondary element sits below it, and the rest falls away.

Measure where it sits, too. Draw the line through the piece and on mine it lands near the sixty forty mark, which is close enough to the golden ratio to be the same idea. I don't think Gibbons worried about that much, but it is a good rule to keep in mind.

While the ground comes down, leave roughly an inch untouched all around the main element on the front, and about half an inch on the back. You will want that wood later. Every bit of depth you carve into a flower has to come from somewhere, and removing it early is a decision you cannot undo.

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.

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. The lower board gets the same patch domed outward instead.

Then the upper piece drops down over the lower one and the two read as a single carving from the side. Glue that upper layer on flat instead and from the side it looks like exactly what it is, two boards stacked.

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 gradual valley with a soft transition into it. 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. They look like scrap hanging off the blank, and students who took a class with me before know how much they matter.

Here is the sequence. You carve the front. Then, when the shapes are settled and it is time to go under every petal, you flip the whole thing and clamp it by those legs. Now the back is facing you and the relief can be hollowed out from behind. 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 vice. Enough pressure to stop it walking, no more. Squeeze a two inch blank too hard in a vice 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. That is a lot of basswood. Even so, in one spot I did not have enough thickness for the flower Gibbons had there, and I had to work with what I had.

The finished carving runs 8 5/8 by 10 7/8 inches, 219 by 275 mm. Background is 9 3/4 by 13 1/4, so 248 by 337 mm. Limewood is what Europe calls it, Tilia on the botanical label, and both are the same kind of tree. The outline comes off 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	Its size	What it is doing right then
Chopping the waste	Number nine gouge, and go bigger still	20 mm	Takes the blank down really fast
Hollowing the back	Same nine, laid low and kept gradual	20 mm	Carves the valley without spooning it
Piercing for shadow	Number nine again, rotated like a drill	6 mm	Pops a plug straight through it
Shaping small petals	Number three, an Ashley Iles detailing tool	3 mm	Outlines and undercuts a single edge
Freeing a stem	Number eleven, taking crumbs and nothing more	2 mm	Separates it without snapping it off
The final darkness	Number eight micro gouge, held upside down	1 mm	Digs in under each petal edge

Now the brands. My quarter inch number nine is an Auriou, French made. The detailing tools are Ashley Iles, the Peter Benson collection, and they are not micro tools. They are called detailing tools. Genuinely tiny ones come from Dockyard, including a little V tool. My small mallet was made for me by the woodturner Tim Yoder.

Early on, do not reach for tiny tools. The bigger tool is better every time while you are still removing mass. From the detail stage onward you will live in the small ones, and there is no way around owning some. There is a whole course about tools if your bench is still filling up, and a separate one on sharpening.

Sharpening deserves one line here. I strop on a plain piece of leather, no jig at all, using Mirror paste by Trend, and I strop the inside as well as the outside. Green paste and blue paste both work. When you are carving details and you have decided not to touch the piece with any abrasive afterwards, the edge is the only thing standing between you and a torn petal.

Where does the shadow come from?

Openings that go all the way through. My go to move is a plug: stand a 6 mm number nine upright, rotate it like a drill, and a little core pops out. Push it through and suddenly the petal above has a black hole under it and the whole area gains depth.

After that comes waviness. Straight lines kill a flower. Every edge should ripple a little, and the surface of a petal should bulge in the middle with a shallow hollow either side of the bulge. Two hollows and one rise, and on a petal this small you have to look sideways to even see it.

If any of that is making sense, the way in is the tuition page. All eighteen classes are inside, along with the acanthus work and everything else.

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.

Sanding is your call. You can sand this piece if you want to. For me it made no sense here, and I think it looks better without it. 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, and I mean it kindly. You will break something. A stem. Maybe a petal edge, or a leaf that went one shaving too thin. I broke mine and I was fine with it. Wood carved that thin lives right at the edge of breaking, which is the price of the depth a Gibbons panel is made of.

Students send their finished panels in for the assessment. Run the photograph through something like TinyPNG before you upload it, because thousands of people are doing the same thing and the database only grows one way.

Shall we carve?