​Lettering in Wood

You lay the inscription out by hand, which is quite tricky, you trace it onto the wooden roundel and carve the letters by hand, and then it is turned into a bowl on a lathe
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I have had great help from my sisters, and friends in the 
www.scottishlettercutters.co.uk​

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Working outside and making use of odd bits of wood is a source of great pleasure

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from The Gains of Good by Siegfried Sassoon

​​Lettering in Stone

To cut letters in stone you make repeated small incisions with a flat-ended chisel to form straight and curved edges ​

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Hand on chisel, eye on stone
Tungsten steel meets pristine slate
A brief encounter, an incisive stab,
Sense intense in a place alone
Just stone and chisel, eye and brain
Work as one to fabricate
A single letter of graceful form
A thousand cuts until it’s done
And then the next, and next, again

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This is a piece of sandstone

Tom Perkins taught me to draw Roman letters and John Neilson to lay them out and carve them






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​The first piece of lettering 
I ever carved, with Pip Hall

lines from Craftsmen​ by Vita Sackville-West