Turning again

This week I was feeling well enough to turn my first bowl in a few months. I'd actually started turning it before I fell ill and had managed to finish the outside. When I got back to it it had cracked and so I had to change the shape completely (I wanted to salvage this lovely spalted wood).

If I'm honest, I'm not that keen on the shape and I'm not really happy with the carved decoration nearest to the top, but I do like the decoration nearest the base and I think that it is something that I'd like to do more of. I did something similar with this bowl I turned previously-

I can't take any credit for that type of carving, my inspiration comes from Jim Sannerud (though he clearly does it much better). Here is an example of one of his bowls-

 

Check out his website here. Robin Wood has also just put out a blog post about an old Swedish bowl that he saw whilst running a bowl turning course at the North House Folk School in America. It includes a similar type of carved decoration, so it looks like it might be quite a traditional style. This is a picture of the original bowl-

It belongs to Roger Abrahamson, another fantastic turner. Check out Robin Wood's blog post here for a great read and some pictures of similar bowls made by Robin and Roger. And Roger Abrahmson's website is here.

Overall I'm just happy to be turning again and look forward to making many more bowls in the hopefully near future.