Wood carvers’ Tintern wonders
THE stunningly beautiful Tintern Trails walking route beside Tintern Abbey now boast some wonderful animal wood carvings courtesy of Tus workers who created them during a 12 week course.
Course participants from across County Wexford, who had no experience in wood carving, managed to create fantastic wood sculptures featuring wood spirits.
The woodworking course - which began in early February and continued for 12 weeks - was carried out in conjunction with Tommy Kelly of Bevel Furniture and Wexford Local Development ( WLD). It is one such project and has been run successfully over the past four years.
The aim of the project was to produce approximately 12 separate carvings for Tintern Trails. The participants carved a wood spirit in a small log approximately six to eight inches in diameter. These comprised a number of different animals which are resident in the Tintern area like squirrels, rabbits, owls and badgers.
The carvings were crafted from 50-year-old douglas fir logs whch were kindly donated by Coillte Ireland. The majority of the work was completed using woodcarving chisels and a mallet and the designs were selected by the participants.
Tús is a community work placement initiative providing 340 work placement opportunities annually across the county.
As part of the experience, participants are given the opportunity to take part in additional training and upskilling through courses and special projects.
A Wexford Local Development spokesperson said: ‘ This project has been an extraordinary achievement considering no participant had previous experience in wood carving. These carvings are testament to the amount of work, commitment and creativity that each individual put into the project.’
The spokesperson added: ‘From this experience, the participants gained not only a sense of achievement, but also some invaluable skills in wood working, during the course.’
RTE Nationwide’s team were on site filming a documentary on Bevel Woodworking Studio in Saltmills and all participants were filmed carrying out their work. This programme will be broadcast in the near future. This course also saw the first female participant in attendance at a wood work course run by WLD.