Coverboy!!

It's not often that a lovespoon carver gets the opportunity to appear on the cover of a magazine!!   It's even more special when the magazine is written by and directed to my peers in the woodcarving community!   I feel tremendous pride having my work thought well enough of just to be considered for inclusion in the Woodcarvers Gazette, so I am absolutely thrilled to have this piece on the front cover!!   Here's a big thank you to Jason and all at the British Woodcarvers Association!!

As for the spoon itself, it is a wedding spoon I carved recently for my cousin Rachel's wedding.  Carved from some wonderfully figured broadleaf maple, rendering this particular design was not without its challenges.   Whenever I carve heavily figured wood like this, I can expect some splintering,
grain tear-out and some bumpiness along straight surfaces...and this piece was no exception!!  More than once, I wondered if I had made a colossal mistake and would have been better off carving it from lime or something nice and soft.  But once the oil went on and that stunning, shimmering grain revealed itself in all its splendor, the effort was definitely worth it!!

I'm very pleased with the merging of Art Deco and Celtic style which I think this spoon conveys.  There is lots of romantic meaning in the design and it's 'look' is refined but not pretentious...hopefully, you'll feel the same way about it!!