Carsten Nilsson - Woodcarving Artist
For over 20 years, Carsten Nilsson has been providing carpenters, designers and restoration professionals with quality woodcarving.
23/02/2019
For over 20 years Carsten Nilsson has been working as a professional woodcarver to provide carpenters, designers and restorators with the highest quality woodcarving. Every single piece that he makes is carved by hand in his studio in Sweden.
While most of his woodcarving work is done on commission, he also spends his time carving his custom wooden mirror frames, making salt and pepper mills, and offering a selection of wood carving courses.
Carsten can spend up to 6 months carving a mirror frame and interested parties can buy a finished mirror that he has made according to custom specifications on appearance, dimensions, colour choices and material.
Nilsson's commissioned work ranges from the restoration of previous 17th-century antiques to the carving of modern prototypes for furniture pieces for well-known designers.
In addition to having his work displayed at exhibitions around Sweden, Carsten is a popular woodcarver on Instagram, where he shares photos and videos of his creations. Check out some of Carsten's work on Instagram.
When carving his mirror frames, Carsten uses about thirty different carving gouges, and to meet his own high specifications for quality, he only uses tools with perfect edges. To keep his tools sharp he uses a variety of grinding stones for different tools so that he can get his tools to exactly the right sharpness.
Carsten is one of the few remaining woodcarvers in Sweden who is able to provide custom woodcarving for the restoration of antique furniture. He regularly receives commissions for antiques were embellishments or ornamentation has been damaged, or where an overlay has broken off over the years. Carsten is able to carve new pieces to restore antique furniture to its original condition.
Carsten designs and manufactures mills from scratch in his workshop. Each mill is inspired by the Gustavian style of the 18th century and the production is mills is small-scale using time-consuming methods and exact craftsmanship behind each pepper mill.
Manufacturing begins with sourcing the right wood, with walnut or birch being the preferred choice, and every piece is hand-turned to achieve the exact dimensions and proportion. Once the piece is turned, the pattern is drawn on freehand before Carsten carves the designs by hand. Each pepper mill is assembled by hand and is delivered with a signed certificate of quality.
