Craft to Wood Art

For the first couple of years I went to lots of craft shows and continued making just craft work but even at that stage people would say my platters were too good to use and would buy them for display purposes only. This combined with a demonstration I saw on barley twists really inspired me and for the first time I released the true potential of the wonderful medium of wood.

I could use the skills I had learned at woodturning to create art in wood.

From then on I started teaching myself how to master all types of barley twist and bind work before trying to incorporate them into new artistic pieces. To my surprise I also discovered my maths actually helped, since if I carved the binds so that they were mathematically correct they would therefore look ascetically pleasing to the eye. With these skills I started producing Bind Vases, the binds of which I carved with a double curvature.

The picture above is of one of my slightly later Bind Vases that also features a triple open barley twist up through the centre of it.

The bind vases were just the start though and I realised that there was now a whole new area I could be exploring of wood art. There were other enhancement techniques I had heard about and what’s more I had ideas for much more complex and intricate artistic pieces.