Bjarne Jespersen

Freelance woodcarver
Naestved, Denmark

I use creative geometry to bring new life to old traditions of "magic woodcarving", i.e. the art of carving a piece of wood into parts that are loose, but cannot be separated. Traditional examples are wooden chains and balls in cages, as seen in such items as Welsh love spoons and European wool winders. Next year a book will be published by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, explaining my carving technique and the geometric methods I use to develop my models.

Royal Family
Royal Family
Ø 60 mm, Ø 75 mm, Ø 80 mm, Ø 100 mm, Ø 105 mm
Wood
2002

The five pieces share a basic weaving pattern which is symmetrically repeated in five different ways according to a technique using rhombic polyhedra, as explained in my Bridges paper last year and used again in this year's paper. My titles for the individual pieces are Triple Whitehead, Wave Packet, Tetracoil, Halo, and Hexacoil. The numbers of components in each are three, six, four, ten, and six.