Wooohooo!! I'm going to interrupt the flow of the Eisteddfod lovespoon blog to vent some of my excitement about the advance copy of my newest lovespoon book, "History of Lovespoons" which I just received from the great folks at Fox Chapel publishing!!!
Its even more beautiful in real life than I could have hoped for when I was typing up the rough draft!
I think it is far and away the most informative, thoroughly researched and extensively illustrated lovespoon book on the market. Although these little snapshots I took with the old point and shoot camera hardly do it justice, it will at least give a jist of the beautiful lovespoons that can be found inside!
With an exhaustively researched section on the history, myths and symbolism of the lovespoon, this book will hopefully debunk much of the fanciful twaddle that appears on many commercial sites. Historical lovespoons from Wales and continental Europe show in rich colour what lovespoon carving is all about! I received wonderful support from many museums throughout Wales, Sweden, Norway and Germany and the beautiful spoons they allowed me to show here are worth the price of the book many times over! This is a chance to see some spectacular collections without leaving your armchair!!!
The book also goes into great detail explaining the symbols found on historic and modern lovespoons. There is even an entire section which explaining the meanings of various spoons part by part. (The photo here shows a beautiful old 3 bowl spoon from the fabulous collection of the National History Museum of Wales at St Fagans.)
Concluding with a lovely gallery of modern work by some of the top lovespoon carvers from around the globe, this is a great opportunity to see what is going on with lovespoon carvers throughout the globe. With spoons by Alun Davies, Mike Davies, Sion Llewellyn, David Stanley, Adam King and Ralph Hentall, there is no doubt that a wonderfully wide range of styles and techniques will be on show!! The lovespoon is a versatile thing and the design possibilities are virtually infinite, so I am super- excited to be able to highlight so many lovespoon carvers whose work I admire so much! Its an absolute treat to have them all here in one place!!
Naturally, I want to show off Laura's page! She and I are putting the finishing touches to our 2012 Eisteddfod lovespoon design and should be posting it very soon. We lovespoon carvers generally work alone, so it is very exciting and challenging to team up and do a spoon which combines very different design styles and very different approaches to carving and technique. But if the last spoon we did together was anything to go by, we'll both have a great time and some very lucky winner will walk off with the fruits of our labour!!
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