Historic Carving students are diverse in age and experience. A year group will often include cathedral masons and contemporary fine artists but we have helped a skateboarding professional, a ballet dancer and at least one flying trapeze artist into new careers as carvers. What they all have in common is the ability to develop a good eye, an interest in the history of our craft and a great enthusiasm for carving. Whilst the majority of students come from the UK, we have also worked with students from Ireland, Spain, Holland, Italy, Bulgaria, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, Zimbabwe, Barbados, Canada and the United States.
There is a useful Youtube video of our students talking about their experience here..
and you can read below what our alumni have to say about studying with us…
Discovering the carving department at City & Guilds of London Art School was like unearthing a rare and precious treasure. It’s a very special place, for me mainly because at its heart is a solid, traditional (and importantly) hands-on, practical learning that gives you a solid set of traditional skills, that you can add to, experiment […]
As well as woodcarving and gilding, the course covered a wide range of disciplines, from fundamentals such as drawing, modelling and casting to more specialised areas of practice like lettering and bronze casting. Each discipline has a distinct skillset, but all of them are closely related to one another and ultimately feed back into woodcarving, […]
What really stayed with you from your time at the Art School? Two things really stayed with me after graduating. The first was having found a real sense of community at the Art School; it is a very special place for a multitude of reasons but, in an age of increasing technological growth, the school […]
My time at City & Guilds of London Art School was a great experience. I was a carpenter before I came to the Art School and enrolled on the Historic Woodcarving and Gilding course. My knowledge of wood and how to work with it was already in place and CGLAS took it to another level. […]