I have recently completed one side of the acanthus scrolls for the top of a Philadelphia Highboy carved in mahogany. The photo below is of a Highboy that I carved about 8 years ago. Danny Hinson, of Charleston SC, built 2 of these and I carved the details both of them. He got one, and I got the other. I thought it was a great deal!
The design I am carving is a combination of several different Highboy designs. Slightly different than the one I carved before, and based on others that I have seen from photographs. I have tried to keep the original integrity and basic flow and design of the leaves as close to the originals as possible.
This is the actual carving I did for the video lesson.
I have videoed the carving process and through the month of June (while I am traveling in Europe) each of the 4 episodes will be added to my online school each week.
It is such a beautiful, delicate and flowing design – 3/8″ thick at the thickest part, and going down to 1/8″ thick in some sections. I showed how I attached this carving to a backer board in a previous blog.
Still to come: Center shell (shown below – not quite finished), rosettes, cartouche and finials for the Highboy! Yeeha!
Center shell that will eventually be a lesson on the online school.
The center shell is fascinating in the way that a number of “C-bars” start as C-bars and become something else at the other end. Morphing C-bars!
It’s going to be great fun carving this one.
Isn’t that just a beautiful design? I’m sorry to say that I didn’t come up with it 🙂
I have not filmed this one yet, but am guessing it will be close to a 3 to 4 hour lesson when completely finished. Since I have to carve 4 of these, maybe I’ll wait to film the final one when I am much more efficient!