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…

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…

Using hand tools to create beautiful and functional bowls from freshly split birch can be something of an addictive pursuit. For those who have taken the introductory session of this course before and/or have experience carving with green wood, long-time instructor Jon Strom offers this new extended course focused on…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Dragons and their brethren have a long and checkered history with humans: sometimes protectors, sometimes defenders, part snake, part horse, part god, part elephant? Well, maybe not the elephant part in the Norse dragons. Carve a large-format dragon head to protect your own home (or just your bookshelf) in this…

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…

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…