WoodLust: Part 2

Things happen sometimes seemingly by chance.

It was actually a fair amount of work to get the stumps to this point.

During a brief visit  to California about 4 years ago, I noticed, almost too late, that a neighbor was ripping out a boxwood hedge.  I drove by, then went around the block, parked the car and asked if I could have a few of the stumps...and as they were all destined for the landfill, they said, "less for us to haul away".  So I ran home, grabbed a wheelbarrow and threw 4-5 of the best-looking ones in the barrow and hurried home. As I was leaving for Italy the next day I just threw them under cover in the garage.

I knew boxwood was ideal for really fine detail in the Japanese woodblock prints I was making and I also knew that it was the traditional wood used in end-grain woodblock illustrations from about 1500 until the early 1900's.

And that's how I started engraving.

One of the first rounds off the stump, cut and polished by hand.

"Cardinal Climber", 2014. My very first wood engraving carved from the block above.

Encouraged by my first attempt and with the stumps still slowly seasoning,  I started reading about engraving, looking at the works of engravers and illustrators, and once back in Italy, I tried engraving small pieces of a few of the woods I had available locally; olive branches and the odd round of pear or apple from the pruning we do several times a year.   Jump ahead to this year,  and now after completing a few more engravings,  I decided that the wood was probably seasoned enough to try cutting.  Since my "test" blocks have always been hand-cut, the two surfaces were never perfectly parallel, and needed to be printed by hand with a baren or a spoon. But since I'm thinking of adding text and printing with a letterpress machine.....I needed to find someone with the right tools.

Fortunately I found a local furniture maker and craftsman who was able to cut down two of the better log/stumps into flat rounds. I had him cut them 240mm high, just a tad higher than French/German lead type.........as sanding and polishing should fix that.


So now I have a few years' worth of boxwood and it's time to get to work.