A master
CARVER
Guest editor Kevin Alviti talks
all things carving with world-
renowned master carver, Chris Pye
When I was asked to pick a carver to feature for this
issue, one person instantly sprang to mind. I’m sure
everyone will agree that Chris Pye is a household name
in the carving world and I felt incredibly lucky that he
agreed to be interviewed (I skipped around the room when
he replied). His books were some of the earliest I owned
on woodcarving and, coupled with his online teaching
website, he really helped me develop my skills as I was
learning to carve. Not only is he an incredible educator
when it comes to carving, but he is also a true artist who
creates amazing works of art, some of which seem to defy
the material they are made out of.
How did you become a carver? What was training to be
a carver like?
I wouldn’t say I was ‘trained’, any more than a duck ‘trains’
to get on to water. Woodcarving wasn’t even a twinkle in
my eye when I conceded that, after four years as a medical
student, I was going down the wrong path, and left. I
had no idea what another ‘path’ could be and it was only
by sheer accident (and very good fortune) that I met the
master carver who became my mentor, Gino Masero.
My education up to that point had been scientific and
I knew next to nothing about wood, except the ‘growing
on trees’ part, never mind working it. I had, however,
loved painting and making things, so I guess I was open
to the idea of something art or craft-oriented. I was
actually thinking of stone carving as I stepped into
Gino’s workshop…
When I saw what he was doing and breathed in the
heady aroma of limewood, well, I was like that duck,
finding its pond and desperate to get swimming.
Carving is an odd, back-to-front craft. I had no
experience of wood or chisels, nor training in art and
design, but my brain just seemed to be wired for it,
the whole thing. It was as if I knew about woodcarving
before I knew about woodcarving…
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1 2 6
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1 This is me in 1975 carving an organ screen in
pierced relief in my first workshop down a Cardiff
back street 2 I designed and carved this limewood
coat of arms exactly one year after I first picked
up a carving tool. I see all sorts of faults with it
now but rejoice in the young man who had a go
3 Another early piece: I sculpted this elmwood
piece in 1976, while waiting for my son to be born
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4 & 5 Details of Hanging Coat and Hat, carved in 6-8 Pond Table in limewood and willow, with toughened glass and stainless
3 4 French oak
8 steel 9 Cap & Dog Lead carved in lime, box, oak and yew woods
At what point did you set up on your own? What has shaped your carving style? Where do you look for inspiration for your next carving? air-dried French oak. French oak is grown and harvested
Cutting a short story shorter, a year later and after obsessional I carve by leaving my work ‘straight for the chisel’. So the Over the years, almost all of my work has been commissioned, differently when compared with oak in the UK. It carves very
study, practice at home and with advice from Gino, I took on last caress of the gouge lies on the wood surface, like the which means I’ve been given parameters. I love having a brief; well with a light, crunchy feel. The more open grain requires
a simple lock-up shop and started offering my services as a brushstrokes of a painter. I rarely, and then discretely, use it puts a fence around what would otherwise be the equivalent more robust details.
woodcarver. I put things I’d carved in the window and contacted sandpaper – for a snail shell, say, where a polished surface is of a blank canvas, with its concurrent, what-do-I-do anxiety. I’ll For my carving I need a bland wood to show off the lights
as many people as I could think of for work. And, somehow, the absolutely called for. (almost) interrogate clients about what they have in mind; after all, and shadows of the forms; no knots or figuring. Both lime and
duck started swimming. Looking back, I can’t believe I did this. Working directly with the tools is how I was initially taught, they’re the ones who’ll have to live with the finished piece, not me! French oak are really quite boring woods! Who makes a piece
Luckily I was young and foolish. an approach I’d loved since I first picked one up. It may seem a On the other hand, I don’t like too many constrictions, which is of furniture out of limewood? And you always want the silver
Quite early on I got work incising house names into pre-cut cliché but truly, as I carve, my tools become extensions of my the main reason I dislike reproducing the work of others. What rays or interesting knots in oak furniture. But for me, that’s
boards for a firm that supplied them through garden centres all hands. I don’t think about them; they just appear in my hands I want is a seed from which to grow my ideas and designs and great; all the more of the boring stuff left for us carvers.
over the country. I was paid per letter. Painfully slow at first, as I focus on the wood and the forms I visualise beneath. – limits apart – I do like coming up with ideas, developing and Knowing nothing about wood when I began carving, I needed
before too long I had built up my speed and ended up carving As to the design style of my carving, I’ve never specialised working from my own designs. to educate myself quickly. Finding samples of various woods
hundreds of letters every week. – unlike most of the other members of the Master Carvers To my mind, the pre-carving, creative bit is more important was an obvious start, but I also collected their sawdust in jam
Something happened that was a revelation: lettering demands Association (MCA) who are true experts in, for example, Rococo and usually more fun than the hard work of actually carving. jars and learned to distinguish different woods by their smell.
a high level of skill, both in the laying out and the carving, and or Baroque. This has lot to do with reproduction or restoration, Even now I could walk blindfolded into a workshop and know
I really worked hard at that. What I didn’t realise was how this and earning a living. Which is not to say that the MCA isn’t Where do you see your work heading in the future? what wood they’ve been working with.
discipline – the demand for precise tool control, visualisation and full of wonderfully creative and talented carvers producing I’ve never seen myself as having a path or journey, as professed
repeated cutting – drove all my other carving skills to a higher level. unique work. However, I’ve never tried to specialise myself by many artists, but more and more I find I’m undertaking fewer Do you use any tools with real sentimental value?
Other work came in: classical decorations and mouldings for and happily carved whatever unique style-free pieces clients commissions and carving just for myself. A good example would I have a couple of tools that Gino gave me. As you can imagine,
a fireplace manufacturer, restoring furniture, commissions for have asked of me. be my latest project, the Pond Table. The idea came to me as I these are quite precious.
organ screens or rocking horses, free sculpture and relief carving I was very keen on wood sculpture when I first took to carving. canoed over a glassy morning lake in Maine. Looking down, I Other tools I really love are the old ones, with the names of
– all sorts of things. My rule was never to say no, which I didn’t, It was the sad time of the ‘elm glut’ and some wonderful stumps could see the bottom with reeds through which swam little fish, previous owners on the handle, sometimes half a dozen, one
even when I’d no idea what I was letting myself in for. were to be had, but I couldn’t see how I could earn a living from it. and I wondered if I could capture that sense in a glass-topped table. below the other. And then, look! There’s mine at the bottom of
So, summing up, I see myself as self-taught but with a huge I still retain a deep interest in sculpture, especially glyptic the list. And I wonder who will have custody of the tool after me…
formative start in tools, sharpening, handling and the traditional forms. When, for example, I carved a hanging coat with an What is your favourite wood to carve?
carving ‘process’ from Gino Masero, with whom I continued to accompanying hat – from one block of wood – it’s the underlying Air-dried, close-grained limewood is right up there at How many chisels do you own?
keep in touch until his death in 1995. I dedicated my first book to sculptural forms I go after first and foremost, with the detail the top. I love the smell, the colour and the way shavings peel I’ve never deliberately collected tools but after nearly 50 years
him and every time I teach I feel I’m a conduit for his knowledge added to that. The underlying forms are the rhythms of the song; from a cutting edge. Limewood is justifiably well-renowned since I started professionally carving and teaching I’ve built up a
and generosity of spirit. the details are the overlying melody. as the carvers’ wood and takes fine detail. Very close is clean, ridiculous number: tools bought for myself as needed, or for my
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classes here and in the US; tools gifted to me from retired
carvers, or carvers’ widows; tools I’ve designed for various
manufacturers; tools I’ve forged for myself; tools I’ve reviewed
for magazines, and so on. It’s a long list. I’m not going to
count them…
But tools aren’t carving, are they?
Many beginners get sidetracked into the tools, wanting to
build up a ‘set’ before starting, and spend too little time using
them at the bench. For nearly all my work I use a hard core of
around 70 to 80 tools, and that’s for everything, from lettering
and mouldings to relief carving and sculpture.
As I get older, I use fewer and fewer tools, and look forward
to swamping eBay with the rest.
How did the Covid-19 lockdowns affect you, your work or
your carving?
Very little really, introvert that I am, tucked away on the border
with Wales in rural Herefordshire. The sadness was not seeing
friends and family.
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How do you think you’ve influenced the world of carving over
the years?
I’ve been teaching and writing about woodcarving for many years
and more recently created an online woodcarving instructional
site. This, I think, has been my best effort yet: if a picture is worth
a thousand words, how about a moving one?
And I like to think I’ve passed on – given back? – what was given
to me and much more, and enabled many people from around the
world to feel the joy of carving and to become better carvers. From
feedback I’ve had, I think I’ve been largely successful.
I think my original background in scientific methods has separated
me from other teachers: I’ve been more able to analyse and clarify
what I am doing, whether that’s how to sharpen carving tools
efficiently or the actual process of carving, and then explain it simply
either in my books or for magazines, or directly with students.
My aim has always been to teach transferable skills. I’ve often
thought I only have a few carving techniques – though I do them
well – and I just apply them to different projects. That might seem
a bit reductionist but, at a granular level, carving is a very simple
thing to do. It’s the mind behind the carving that separates us.
Here’s the thing: I learned from Gino Masero, one of many
unpretentious, unknown carvers. He learned from his own teacher
who in turn learned from his. Who, in turn had learned from his,
and so on.
Hold that heritage in your mind and let me add this:
In the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, stands a wooden figure of an
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Egyptian scribe called Ka’aper, carved in sycamore some 4,580 10 Carving of the ancient Egyptian scribe Ka’aper 11 Lettered bowl in lacewood featuring the words: Coming Around and Going Around 12 Horseshoe
years ago. I saw the work many years ago in the Metropolitan Crab table. The full Latin name of the crab makes up the scuttling marks on the sand. Yew wood crab on a walnut tabletop 13 Merlin Hawk on Post, carved in
Museum, New York. Looking around the back I found gouge lacewood 14 Baseball Cap carved in limewood
marks. And I immediately knew what I was looking at: the gouge
would have been copper but I could name the sweep, and I could
see the carver was right-handed by the way the facets were cut What I hadn’t clocked was the big rack of organ pipes just above beneath the bench and rubbed the concoction into the scratch line.
into the wood. my head. Without any warning and just as I was cutting around The result looked just like some of the other marks and gashes on
Here’s what blows me away and why we carvers are so the outer edge of a letter ‘O’, some mad organist started their the bench. So all looked ‘well’, though I knew I’d got off lightly.
privileged: there is a real line, a legacy winding through history day by crashing down on all the organ keys, one shattering chord The work was inspected – they were very happy – and I just lied:
between that Egyptian carver, through ancient Greece, the Dark just above me. Let’s put it this way: I nearly disgraced myself as I ‘Sorry. Nothing I could do about that old scratch; just had to work
PHOTOGRAPH BY DJEHOUTY/CREATIVE COMMONS
Ages, the Northern Renaissance, somehow, to my own teacher and jumped out of my skin. The gouge jerked out of the carved letter around it. What? Have I seen the organist? What organist?’
to me. And on to anyone who has learned something for me, and and scored a white gash across the dark wood…
passes it on. It’s sort of funny now but I stood there aghast, taking deep What hobbies do you have outside of woodcarving?
breaths and wondering what to do. I’ve been playing ‘clawhammer’ banjo for the last six years. It’s a
Do you have any funny woodcarving stories? I was lucky in that I hadn’t made the final cut around the outer beautiful old style that goes back to the instrument’s African roots
So… I’m in the chapel in Clifton College, Bristol, on my knees and edge of the ‘O’ so I had just enough spare wood to cover the big exit – as opposed to the Bluegrass (Deliverance) Scruggs-style with its
bent painfully forward over the seat of a fixed bench by the wall, nick and, after burying the organist, I repaired the main edge of frenetic picking, which I don’t particularly like. I have an online
straining towards its upright back. I’m incising a list of names, the letter. However, the white scratch still remained, distressingly tutor, practise every day and play with friends in a small band.
adding to a previously carved roll call. and obviously my own work. We write and perform our own material now. I also love writing,
It’s a really awkward, twisted position from which to carve Stepping back I also noticed that years of use had left all sorts of haiku in particular:
anything. And first I must carefully draw the names on to the other scratches on the bench. That was my way out.
dark, vanished oak, then cut directly into the bench itself. The I always take my oilstones with me when I’m carving on site and shiny bevel.
10 newly cut letters stand out, white, against the dark brown varnish. one of them had oily, black, metal gunge on its surface from when catch myself peering out
So, really precise cutting with no second chances, but so doable. I’d sharpened a chisel. I scraped the old oil off, mixed in dirt from smelling of limewood
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