History of Club

 

The Exeter Woodcarving Club was founded in February 2004 by a small group of people who wanted to have somewhere they could meet and carve together.

 

All of these people had been carvers and had taken lessons at some stage with a professional carver who had recently retired. To keep their skill and aid one another. Exeter Wood Carvers was born,

 

A church hall was hired on a weekly basis in Pinhoe. As word got out of this new club other people began showing an interest in the art of carving and wanted to join the existing carvers it was then decided that the club would be open to all abilities from the carver who was an expert down to the totally inexperienced.

 

To get started we provide a bench and club tools whilst one of our members will set up a product just to give the person a taste of carving. It is usually an ivy leaf that is drawn onto a piece of wood and they will be shown how to begin to carve the leaf out. At the point it is important to stress that we are not a teaching club but there is always someone on hand who will give advice and help.

 

As more members joined it was decided to form a committee to deal with the finer points of running the club and so  tree members were voted in by members.

 

As timed passed we outgrew the premises having grown to fifteen members and so arrangements were made to move to a larger hall which had the advantage of having its own parking area.

 

We decided to enter our crafts in some of the local shows and so we invested in a marquee of our own. This provided invaluable as more people showed an interest and joined. We now average between twenty and twenty five members, both men and woman. We also found it necessary to have two more members of the committee and so we have five members who meet at three monthly intervals.

 

We now enter our exhibits in four different large shows on a permanent basis and several smaller village shows. We try to encourage members to help am the displays and are on hand to offer help.