Continuing with the weirdness and going totally off-topic from the type of posts you usually find here, let’s talk about a book of spoons and what it meant to me!.
The book is a short one, split into three parts:
- A story about the author, and how he got into spoon carving.
- Instructions on spoon carving techniques and knife grips.
- A beautiful collection of spoons, with some words about each one of them.
I’ve never heard of Barn The Spoon, he is a spoon artisan carving from green wood mostly using a knife and an axe. I actually got attracted to this book after seeing it while attending a workshop on wood carving, the idea of such a specific book and the hippie feel of everything related to carving without any advanced tools picked my interest, so immediately ordered it from Amazon.
I can’t recommend this book to everybody, but the vibe that it transmits it’s something felt close. The story of Barn is an interesting one, worth reading. And the included pictures are gorgeous (yes, those spoon photos are actually amazing, kudos to the photographer). The only point where it fails to me is trying to explain the knife grips using only prose, probably my engineer’s mind is tricking me here, but some drawings on what is trying to be conveyed would help.
After skimming it, and then thoroughly reading the book, Armed with a sharp knife, a hook knife and the explained techniques I started to carve my first spoon. Which was ok, chunky and nicer to look at than to use, but a second one followed, then a third… and after half a year spoons keep coming out of my hands!.
That’s the best compliment to give to the book, it made me want to carve and enjoy the carving process in itself. I feel that this was the point of all of it :-D.
My Spoons
I’m very far of being any good at spoon carving, but anyway, the act of simply sitting down, stop whatever you are doing, and silently work with a piece of wood it’s an excellent way to unwind.
Also dangerous! Those knives are incredibly sharp.
A set of 5 small spoons
Those are the spoons I still keep at home, I’m fond of the chunky one, my first one. And the two blackish spoons come from a small twig that came back with me from a hike.
And here, three other spoon pictures that were hidden in my phone:
Castells 