A professional course at the Chippendale school equips students who successfully graduate to set up in business as fully-qualified fine furniture designers and makers.

We endeavour to give them every skill they may need in their future careers, including woodcarving.

Our expert tutor who comes to the school every year is John White from the north west of England, who runs John White Woodcarving, and is a renowned authority in this age-old craft.

He has over thirty years experience in a diverse range of woodcarving projects and, among his clients have been the House of Lords, the Duke of Westminster, National Trust and the National Museums of Liverpool.

John is a qualified teacher, holds City and Guilds in Woodcarving and, when he’s not working on commissions or teaching at the Chippendale school, runs a variety of other woodcarving courses.

He is a passionate advocate of keeping age-old hand crafting skills alive for future generations and, for our students, giving them another dimension with which to sell themselves in a competitive world.

“I obviously start with the basics, giving students the confidence to carve simple patterns,” says John.  “Those basic skills are taught both in group and one-to-one sessions.

“However, by the end of the second week, students will have mastered the techniques involved in carving quite complex patterns and be able to design and carve them for themselves,” he says.

His motto is BS + T = A, meaning Basic Skills and Time equals Anything.  In other words, if you learn those basic skills, and then practice, practice, practice, the only limit on what you can carve is your imagination.

We’ll have a look at what some of the students have carved at the end of John’s two-week stay with us.