The Craxford Snelling Workshop

Lettering Lettering today with Mark Frith, assignment was to draw and cut one short word in one day. I chose to do ‘Save time’ (will be ‘Save time, carve time the line.’ in the end). I’m happy with the design but spent far too long polishing down slate so didn’t get to finish it sadly.…

Stiff Lead Cap Weird day, slow carving but also happy with what I did actually do. Think I’m just scared of this part of the process, worked on the final forms of leafs. Mostly worked on the left hand side, Rich helped a lot today with direction of where I should work and when u…

Stiff Leaf Cap Started noticing a mistake I’d made on the bottom left hand leaf, it’s too small, I pushed the stem up to compensate and it’s helped a little. Apart from this I focused on cleaning the carving, Ghislain told me to follow the curves when doing so as not to destroy the life…

Spent today working between the relief and the cap. Did very little on both, need to speed up, like I’ve been saying for the past four days. Saying that the cap is slowly coming along still. At my studio I continued with the lettering for my ‘Fate of the Guilty’ show. Went slow again but…

Stiff Lead Capital. Everything seems to be in the right place but needs refining. Paul recommended cleaning the masonry first. I didn’t listen stupidly, it was a slow day I struggled a lot. Kept my focus on the stems and general form. Need to stop lagging and focus though, will cut the final stem positions…

Stiff Lead Capital. Have made a few mistakes, gaps between stems and leaves have widened. Placement of bottom leaves are too far apart as well. There should be a reason for the tool I use, don’t use a point for the sake of it. Always question why you’re doing what you are, why is this…

Stiff Leaf Capital. Carried on roughing out stems but quickly moved onto the leaf volumes, using a deer-foot and point for most of it. Tom mentioned the restored mould was a little flat and should change it a little so I left a lot of stone on the left hand leaf for that purpose. 12:30…

Stiff Leaf Capital No photos today, forgot to take them. Finished the main bulk of masonry before lunch, then started roughing out, was a late start as I dropped off Morgan’s slate and then we picked up some marble off cuts from GMI. Roughing out the stems first, will then move onto general shape of…

Calligraphy today, woke up early to practice before I got in Spent much of the day re writing these lines from the song ‘Bella Ciao’, an old communist folk song from Italy. The lines translate as; ‘This is the flower of the Partisan, Dead for our freedom.’ Spent a long time working on ‘o’ forms…

Started the day with a series of brief ‘first thoughts’ of the capital before moving onto the templates, had these cut out and started laying out the stone at 10:30. Wanted to finish the majority of the masonry in one day but couldn’t manage it, didn’t make any mistakes though and took it right to…