Courses

Cranks wind, gears turn, dragons chomp and birds fly. Welcome to the whimsical world of automata: simple wooden machines that delight and amaze. Join Cecilia Schiller for a four-day exploration of the art of making wooden machines and the mechanisms that make things move. Starting with the design process in…

Make the wood chips fly!  This course is for students ready to stand at the chopping block and learn to use classic wooden bowl-carving hand tools – the adze, axe, gouge and push knife.  During this class, topics including selection of wood stock, elements of bowl design, strategies for hand-hewing,…

Make your mark at North House by carving signs for campus! Put your carving skills to good use or learn the basics of incised carving – letters, numbers and other forms – while creating unique signs that will direct students and visitors at North House. A useful course for woodworkers…

Woodenware has been embellished since ancient Egypt: by adding color, pattern and texture, a finished piece reflects the taste, culture, and interests of you, the maker. We will look many places for inspiration: the natural world and the extensive collections of folk art available in digital archives in the museums…

How about carving a wooden figure for the upcoming holiday season—either as a gift for someone special, or for yourself (since you are special, too, right?). Harley, who says, "If you can peel a potato, you can carve a figure," will lead new as well as experienced carvers through the…

The spoon is in the eye of the beholder. A crooked branch can become a perfect ladle; a slight bend makes a lovely eating spoon. Enjoy three days of handwork in this greenwood carving class focused on ladles and spoons. Working with birch, you’ll use simple hand tools and carving…

North House Folk School is delighted to welcome Drew Langsner to campus for the first time to teach a course in bowl making. Drew has been well-known in the traditional craft world for decades as the founder of Country Workshops, a school devoted to the teaching of traditional woodworking with…

Personalize any place by creating a hand-carved wooden sign. Woodcarver Jock Holmen will teach the entire sign-making process, from proper design to layout, letter, and incised carving, painting, and finishing options, while students work on a personal project. Whether it will hang at the cabin, the garden, a business, or…

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…

Another appropriate name for this course could simply be: “Let’s Keep Carving!” It is an inspiring immersion for students with prior carving experience, including seasoned figure carvers, as well as new-to-carving folks who have just completed the three-day Scandinavian Style Figure Carving course. Need some inspiration or a few new…

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…

The timeless beat of the drum stems back to a time when we made our own music, literally from the ground up. Before drum shops and before Putumayo, materials were hand-harvested from the forest to create wonderful sounds and were used to find rhythm in the world. In this course…

Meet Jock Holmen, the “Norwegian Termite”: when it comes to carving on timbers, you can’t “stump” him. From blueberries to little people, lettering to logos, Jock can help you chisel your ideas into white pine as you design and carve decorative embellishments for your home. Choose from a variety of…

The 1904 excavation in Norway of the Oseberg Viking ship revealed a vast array of woodcarvings, unlike anything seen previously. Dragon-like head posts, elaborately carved sleighs, an exquisite wagon, and of course, the carvings on the ship itself revealed the extent of the imagination and skill of woodcarvers in the…