Wood Carved Sign Workshops

Sign Carving (Quarterboards) Workshop

CARVE A BEAUTIFUL SIGN FOR YOUR HOME

There is something satisfying about carving letters into wood and watching words come to life beneath your hands. In this workshop, you’ll learn the traditional skills of hand carved lettering and sign making as you design and carve a personalized wooden sign of your own.

I began my own career in woodcarving in 1979 as a sign carver and have carved signs for both residential and commercial settings. In this class, I’ll take you through the process I learned and have used throughout my career—from developing and laying out a design to carving clean, well-shaped letters by hand.

Quarterboards are a traditional New England art form—carved wooden signs originally associated with ships and later used on homes and buildings. You’ll learn the fundamentals of letter carving, including layout and design, incised carving, relief work, and finishing.

But these skills go well beyond sign making. Once you understand how to design and carve lettering, you can incorporate it into furniture, hope chests, boxes, architectural work, and other woodworking projects, adding names, dates, inscriptions, or other personal details that make a piece uniquely your own.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll go home with a beautiful personalized sign that you designed and carved yourself, along with traditional lettering skills you can continue to use in your own work.

No previous letter-carving experience is necessary.

Student Gallery