Courses

Join us for three days of chopping, carving, and hollowing wooden vessels using all hand tools. Axe carving is physically demanding, so during this class we will focus on body mechanics and ergonomic tool use in order to develop stamina and minimize strain. We will start each day with an…

Make the wood chips fly!  This course is for students ready to stand at the chopping block and to learn to use classic wooden bowl-carving hand tools—the adze, axe, gouge and push knife. Topics to be explored include selection of wood stock, elements of bowl design, strategies for hand-hewing, use…

Peter Follansbee has specialized for 25 years in making reproductions of 17th-century style oak furniture, based on originals from both England and New England. Most of this furniture features extensive carved decoration. This 3-day class will explore the carved decoration in great detail. Using just a few carving gouges, compass…

Weathered lines on faces can tell a thousand stories...and present a challenge to any woodcarver. Face up to any fears you may have and spend two days carving eyes, ears, noses, mouths and beards with Bruce Futterer. Focusing especially on fishermans’ faces, Bruce will have a number of projects students…

This course provides beginning as well as experienced carvers with the opportunity to carve several figures in the Scandinavian flat-plane style.  Beginning with an overview of tool sharpening and safety, the course provides hands-on carving experience as you complete each figure in step-by-step fashion. You will then paint the figures…

Kolrosing is like scrimshaw on wood and a great way to decorate spoons, spreaders, and plates. It doesn’t involve specialized tools, strength, or a studio. In fact, you can do it in your lap and carry everything you need in a pencil case! Rather than removing material, to kolrosing is…

The shrink box is a wooden container that relies on a simple trick: Freshly cut (green) wood and dry wood behave differently. The body of the vessel is made from green wood that changes in size as it dries (putting the “shrink” in shrink box). The bottom of the vessel…

The kuksa is an old-style wooden cup made to travel far and wide and be at the ready, whether the beverage of choice is water from a Boundary Waters lake, coffee of any quality, or even a splash of something stronger (so we’ve been told). Over three days, students will…

Dragons and their brethren have a long and checkered history with humans, sometimes adversarial, sometimes protective. The carving techniques used in this class were handed down from the Viking era (800-1200) and used on Viking long boats as well as the Oseberg ship. Carve a large-scale dragon head of your…

This course provides beginning carvers with the opportunity to create several figures in the Scandinavian flat-plane style. Beginning with tool sharpening, the course provides hands-on carving experience as you complete a figure in step-by-step fashion. You will then paint the figures and apply a final oil finish. After this initial…

In 1904, five dragon-like animal headposts were excavated from the Oseberg Viking ship grave. Dating from 800 A.D., these exquisite carvings with their bared teeth, long necks and elaborate relief carving are iconic works and demonstrate some of the highest levels of art and woodcarving skill seen throughout the world.…

Carving wooden spoons is a tradition in Scandinavia, where carvers crafted spoons for home use, for seasonal income, and to give as gifts. The techniques, designs, and embellishments commonly used today are deeply embedded in centuries of cultural history, but spoon carving is also a vibrant and growing craft tradition…