Customer Reviews

The Art of Turned Bowls: Designing Bowls with a World-Class Turner

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"The Art of Turned Bowls" by Richard Raffan is one of the most important and useful books ever written about woodturning. Its predecessor, "Turned Bowl Design" (1987), now out of print and selling for a premium on the used market, was excellent, and until now, the best book on woodturning design ever written. I read or referred it repeatedly over the years and will undoubtedly do so for this new version.

If you are a woodturner, you will learn, in detail, what you can do to design well-proportioned and aesthetically pleasing bowls and vessels. It doesn't teach you how to turn; there are numerous other good books for that, the latest edition of "Woodturning With Richard Raffan" and its companion DVD are excellent. I taught myself how to turn with the first editions of those. Presented are not only basic general principles of design, like the Rule of Thirds and the Golden Mean, but detailed guidelines on how to prepare bowl blanks from the tree or the lumberyard to show grain patterns to best effect, generate smoothly flowing curves, find the most pleasing relationship between the diameter and shape of a bowl to its base, add interest to your turnings with color, carving, piercing, and other techniques, and a lot of other useful information.

For those unfortunate souls who are not woodturners, this book is good for you too. It is chock-full of beautiful color photographs of Raffan's world-class turnings, as well as those of other expert woodturning artists, an improvement over the mostly black and white photos in "Turned Bowl Design." More importantly, this book will help you understand, when you look at a wood (or ceramic, or glass) bowl that you like, WHY you like it, and why a lot of bowls out there are not well-done.

Overall, "The Art of Turned Bowls" is a peek inside the mind of one of the world's best woodturners (and a very nice and interesting man in person). If you appreciate art and craft in any of its myriad forms, this book will leave you with a good feeling.

If you have his earlier (now out of print) book on bowl design, this book is an outgrowth of that book. The first several chapters are just an expansion of that work, down to using some of the same photos and drawings.

For people that don't have the first book, this books is 100% a great read and recommended.

For people that have the first book, your real treat is the later chapters, which contain much new information.

If you are serious about turning a well shaped object, buy, read and study this book

World-class turner Richard Raffan provides a fine guide to turning bowls in his ART OF TURNED BOWLS, a tutorial teaching bowl design and longevity of product. The focus is on creating lovely shapes and wood which continues to delight as it changes and ages: first published as TURNED-BOWL DESIGN in 1987, this new edition has been completely updated with new information and color photos. Any woodcrafting library needs this.

Almost every book on turning has the "how to use a gouge" section... but where do you go when you need to figure out "why" instead of "how"?

You go here.

Instead of focusing on the technique of turning, Richard Raffan looks at what makes a bowl you want to buy, use, hold, and cherish. How to compare a hit to a "just missed". He starts with the golden rectangle and moves on to curves and proportions, variations in wall thickness, and how they all relate to make a pleasing finished product.

There is still a lot of "how-to", but it focuses on trees (cutting blanks to get the result you want), fitting grain to design, ornamentation (paint, finish, etc.) rather than the basics.

The author's three previous books are available as a boxed set; I think this book is every bit as indispensable and should be included in the set. In the long run, this book will probably take me further as philosophy of design becomes more important than mastery of technique.

As my turning skills grow I realize that I'm weak in the area of design. I have a hard time knowing what will look good in a finished piece, so I was looking for a book to help me understand the principles of design as they relate to turning. This book was exactly what I needed. I now keep it in my shop next to the lathe so I can refer to it directly. It was everything I hoped it would be.

Do not be put off by Art in the title. If you want to understand why some bowls are spectacular this is the book. Richard Raffan hits the mark. The descriptions coupled with the photo examples leave no question as to what he is talking about. One of the missed items in woodturning books is the example of how and why the turned item could be better. This book takes you from good examples of the log cut to the size, shape and finish of your creation. I reviewed this for our woodturning club and it received great enthusiasm. Highly recommended.

As an inexperienced wood turner, I am always looking at new ideas and techniques. The author has provided an impressive range of designs and techniques for bowls, backed up by great illustrations and photographs. The explanations on the cutting of blanks, their grain alignment and how that translates into the final appearance of the bowl was most thought provoking. Full marks to the author another well written and very useful reference guide.

I just bought a lathe and this book was recommended to me by some experienced turners. The book is well written and well organized. The author not only shows the possiblities of turned bowls but also gives the reasons why some shapes work better than others.

As a result, my turned bowls are coming out even better than I had hoped. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning how to make outstanding bowls on a lathe.

The quality and price of the book was amazing. My husband received the book right away and was so happy with everything.

Not as essential a book (for the average wood turner) as some of Mr. Raffan's other books but one that I keep on reading and re-reading. Not at all sorry I bought it. Recommended.