Strapwork.... with Adrian Card

 (Adrian Card photo)

I just finished a wonderful class with Adrian Card held at the studio of Lynne Rutter in San Francisco. The panel was a strapwork design done in traditional colors with a fabulously rich black background.

(Lynne Rutter photo)

We started our day with a "training wheels" panel , practicing brushstrokes, highlights and shading. Adrian also demonstrated how to paint luminescent jewels.

(Lynne Rutter photo)

We traced our design and began to layer in base color, shadows and highlights, mimicking shiny brass for our strapwork framing. Everything was done in oil paint and with only one round brush...as it would have been in the 16th century.

You can see from this detail of Adrian Card's panel, the design is rich with ornamentation,-draped swags, jewels, urns, birds and other  elements adorn the strapwork framing.

You may remember this panel that Adrian did a few years earlier that I included in an earlier post on strapwork.

These are my panels as class ended...I will finish them soon. Thanks go to Adrian Card for his teaching style and Lynne Rutter for the comfortable and creative environment of her studio!

Strapwork...

Adrian Card

Strapwork became popular in the 15th and 16thc through its use in grotesques and frescoes.

Taking its cue from actual metalwork, strapwork is a stylised decorative design mimicking leather, metal or parchment curled and woven into strips and bands.

Adrian Card

Its use on musical instruments, mainly harpsichords, has kept it in vogue over the centuries. Adrian Card masters this art today...view his amazing work here.

Alison Woolley

This is a detail from a harpsichord design created by Alison Woolley of Florencearts. Just "google" the word strapwork and click on Wikipedia's definition....Alison's work is one of the illustrations!

Strapwork is used to weave decorative objects together in arabesque designs.

Its origins are in the arabesques of Arabs and Moors in Spain.

Rivets and cabochons complete the illusion....

Strapwork , carved in wood, was commonly used as borders and cornices in many Elizabethan and Jacobean buildings during the 15th and 16th century as well

Ceilings at this time also produced fine examples of rollwork, or strapwork.

It is still found today, sometimes re-interpreted ...

Used in stone, here, it is carved into an intricate band design.

With a celtic twist, this is another example of strapwork.

Victorian Ornaments and Designs by Samuel Leith is a great source for starting your own creation of strapwork!