Therapeutic carving and giving of oneself.

It’s been too long since I’ve posted here and I think it’s time that I remedied that. In the past two years I have, moved house, built my workshop in the garden, started to produce knives and tools in a more adventurous manner, carved more, etc..

What I have not done is put too many thoughts about all of this in writing.

I have two main hobbies, woodcarving and knifemaking, the two work hand in hand generally as the knives I make are for carving and the knifemaking saves me a vast amounts of money that I might otherwise be tempted to spend buying tools. This hobby also saves me from a great deal of frustration as the kind of tools I like to carve with are simply not available here in the UK.

I have even sold a few knives to fellow carvers and I suspect that if I were willing to really push my knifemaking I could make a fairly productive small business out of it. One of the impediments to that is my urge to create. I struggle with the idea of repeated items, I find batch production to be both boring and soul destroying and am far happier when I am trying something new. One exception to that is the mice that I carve, I carve a lot of mice. My mice however are not carved to a pattern and whist all relatively similar they vary considerably within that general type.

I like nothing better than to try new shapes, new styles and new forms. This is also prevalent in my carving although with my carving there is also a big element of therapy. With my knifemaking I start out with a product in mind and I go full steam ahead to make it. When I carve it is as much the journey as the end result that I find most fulfilling. My most recently finished unique piece, which now hangs on my lounge wall, is a classic case of this. I have spent some months now working on this piece, it is the piece of wood that I like to sit on my knees and take thin slivers of wood from with sharp knives. Often merely the act of using a sharp knife on a piece of wood is enough to make me feel better and I have been particularly stressed during the past few months at work and so have needed that stress relief. In the past 6 months I have completed two sculptural carvings and each one, “Louise” and “Emma” has taken considerably longer to carve than it would had I just been interested in the end result. No it was the carving I enjoyed and gained fulfilment from, yes I enjoyed the creativity and the end results have both been exactly what I originally envisaged but the end result wasn’t the driving force.

One of the outcomes of this, carving for therapy rather than carving to create is that my bigger pieces such as these two have a great deal of my “essence”, my love and my soul poured into them. For the HP fans out there, each of my carvings becomes a little like a benign version of a horcrux, they contain the good bits that pour out of me when I am “in the zone”, in my “happy place”. In my more whimsical moments I like to think that every one of my carvings will enhance and improve it’s eventual home environment because I have poured some of me into it.

I often give my carvings as gifts and although many who receive them might think they are fairly inconsequential gifts I would point out that I don’t give them to just anyone. When I give someone a gift that has taken me time and effort to carve it is for a reason. I have devoted several hours to each of my carvings, although this varies depending on the subject and that is a gift of a part of me, my vision, skill and in many cases emotion. I may make light of such things when actually gifting but the reality is that I do not consider such things lightly. In the past I have carved a number of roses which take a great deal of time and are very technically challenging. All of my roses with one exception which was carved for a charity auction have been gifted to special people, or people who I deem worthy. on occasion I have been asked to carve one, either by a person wanting one for themself or by their partner wanting one for them. In each and every situation I carefully consider whether or not the recipient, in my eyes, deserves one of my roses. I have on the odd occasion not carved a rose as a result of such a request because I do not want to give that person that much of me.

One rather special gift I recently created was for my wife Tracey, those of you who know us will be aware that we are no longer living together and that this year we both had our 60th birthdays. Tracey had planned a week away in The Lake District with a small group of friends and once her family and other friends found out about this, a small lunch gathering became a party for fifty people with people travelling from as far afield as Swindon to be there. She and I were discussing this before she went away and she was saying how surprised she was by the number of people wanting to come. I had to rather strenuously point out to her that she is loved by a great many people. It was then that I had an idea for one of her birthday presents.

I have toyed with jewellery before and have wanted to make silver items out of silver clay for a while so I set about creating a pendant for her. First I carved the pendant in a piece of Pear wood. Then I took mould from this in air drying clay. Once this was set I pressed some silver clay into the mould before allowing it to dry and then tidying it up before firing it.

I will admit to being just a little choked when I gave Tracey her gift, not because it was a fabulous piece of jewellery which had been expertly crafted, because it wasn’t. No I was a bit choked because of the emotion and love I had poured into this small chunk of metal.