Letter cutting

To add a new string to my bow I went up to Walsham-le-Willows in Suffolk yesterday and had a whirlwind introduction to the fundamentals of letter cutting with Mary Anstee-Parry.

And my what a lot of fundamentals and conventions there are !

Mary wouldn't let me use my tracings of computer generated words. I had to draw the letters on the wood freehand and then practice the sequence of cuts to incise them. The wood is French Oak which Mary said wasn't very good - too fast grown - so can't wait to try some good stuff.

To my mind the 'S' looks wrong, the 'N' too wide with its upright stems too thick and raggedness in the 'S' but not bad for a first effort. The reason I used my name was so that I could fix it to my shed or something rather than just write any old word which would then kick around uselessly for ages.


A beautiful Gothic panel carved by Mary from English Oak (shame about the photo quality)