by Elia Bizzarri | Mar 31, 2021 | Classes | 0 Comments
"What did you do during the pandemic, " friends will soon be asking. Now you can have a good answer: "I made a set of French eating spoons for our dining table." Boy, will they be impressed. First we'll learn to carve a French eating...
by Elia Bizzarri | Feb 22, 2021 | Classes | 1 Comment
I first made one of Curtis Buchanan's Velda's Chairs about six or eight years ago when a neighbor came by my shop and ordered two bar stools and a settee in Velda's style. They wanted the chairs unpainted, so I drove three hours to find walnut...
by Elia Bizzarri | Feb 13, 2021 | Classes | 5 Comments
I remember the day I first heard of Dave Fisher. I was standing in front of my shop talking with one of my students about Instagram and he mentioned Dave Fisher. He seemed surprised that I'd never heard of him, so he pulled out his phone and started...
by Elia Bizzarri | Jan 31, 2021 | Classes, Craft Films | 0 Comments
I first met Jane Mickelborough when she spent three days with me and taught a class on spooncarving in my shop. They spent a day carving the spoon, a day chip carving and a day doing wax inlay. Her work is beautiful, with lovely lines and extraordinarily...
by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 31, 2020 | Classes, Craft Films | 1 Comment
I've been looking forward to doing this class for a few months - I first learned to carve a spoon properly in one of Peter's classes and he is such a laid-back, entertaining fellow that the idea of teaching with him sounds like great fun. We'll carve a...
by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 25, 2020 | Chairmaking Tools and Supplies, Classes, Craft Films, Kiln | 3 Comments
Where do you get green wood? I get this question regularly and it's a hard one to answer. Seth and I sell oak splits for chairs, but it's not exactly cheap if you need a bunch of parts. My blog has general suggestions for where to look, but wouldn't it be nice if...
by Elia Bizzarri | Nov 30, 2020 | Classes, Craft Films | 0 Comments
Peter Follansbee and I are planning on a few spoon carving classes in the new year, plus I'm hoping to do a series on making a chairmaking reamer. In the mean time, Curtis and I are doing the last two classes of the Democratic Chair series on October 5th and 12th (we...
by Elia Bizzarri | Oct 22, 2020 | Classes | 2 Comments
It's been a busy month for us. My wife's brother Gabe, who has been fighting cancer for nearly two years, took a turn in mid-September. So we've been driving to Berea, KY every couple weeks to visit and help take care of him. He died nine days...
by Elia Bizzarri | Sep 26, 2020 | Classes, Craft Films | 2 Comments
Last weekend's spoon carving class with Curtis was a blast. It was great to be able to teach with him and I learned a new way to carve a spoon. We're busy figuring out how to get Curtis's camera into his shop and buying lights for my shop before our Democratic Chair...
by Elia Bizzarri | Sep 8, 2020 | Classes | 11 Comments
I'm super excited! I started an apprenticeship with Curtis Buchanan 18 years ago and I've been teaching chairmaking myself for 15 years, but we have never taught together - until now. We're going to teach a series of 10-15 online classes on building Curtis's...
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