Icon Boards
We make Icon boards to any size requirement with some stock sizes being held. The boards can be mailed to the UK or overseas. The boards are available gessoed or ungessoed. The gessoed board is edge sanded and the painting surface left unsanded for the Iconographer to prepare to their specification. Boards can be surface sanded by us at an extra cost, this is careful work and takes a considerable time.
We are proud to be in partnership with one of the best Icon painter Aidan Hart.
Aidan Hart, a member of the Greek Orthodox Church living in Britain, has been a full-time icon painter and carver for over twenty-five years. He has works in more than twenty countries of the world and in many cathedrals and monasteries. Aidan's aim, in accordance with the Byzantine icon tradition, is to make liturgical art that manifests the world transfigured in Christ.
One of our great customers is Catrin Treadwell. Catrin worked as an announcer for the BBC World Service for many years. She studied at the Art Students League and Minerva’s Drawing School in New York and at Heatherleys in London. She teaches portraiture at 240 Project, a centre for the formerly homeless and vulnerable, in the shadow of the ill-fated Grenfell Tower. She is a trustee of F.A.I. UK (Fondo Ambiente Italiano) which cares for the built heritage and landscape of Italy.
We made gessoed panels for Stephanie Rew, a Scottish painter based in Edinburgh, UK. Stephanie's painting are in the figurative realist style, she incorporates oil paintings with gold leaf, combining traditional Early Renaissance gilding techniques with more contemporary ways of painting.
If you wish to obtain a price for an icon board, birch ply panel, or cross etc. please contact us:
+44 (0) 787 177 96 15 or 01952 957 127 or email info@dylanhartley.com
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Icon Boards Info
Lime or Tulip wood are used for the board, with braces made in European Oak or Sapele wood, all woods are kiln dried and sourced from James Latham’s FSC certified stock. A board up to 15cm wide requires no Oak truss at the rear. Boards from 15 – 27.5cm require 1 truss and boards over 27.5cm require 2 trusses. Very large boards will require 3 trusses (over 100cm) Board trusses increase in width and thickness as specified in Aidan Harts book on Iconography.
The hand making of the boards produces a dovetail jointed rear truss and a boarder to the front face, called a Kovtchec in Russian or Kivitos in Greek. The measurement of the Kivitos needs to be specified at the time of order , measured from the board edge to the top (front) of the 45 degree slope into the Icon board. The completed wood board can be purchased at this stage sanded all around to 180 grit finish.
The second purchase option is the gessoed board, to quote from Aidan’s book:
“The brilliant white surface of gesso provides luminosity to the finished painting. This whiteness underlying the icon can be seen as an image of the Holy Spirit. He is the life-giving power proceeding from the Father, the hidden ground and foundation of all that is created. He is also the means to creation’s fulfilment, its transfigurer. Most importantly, the Holy Spirit is the means of mans theosis or deification.”
The eventual veneration of the Icon starts with the daily prayers in our workshop, the prayers of the iconographer during painting and the blessing of the priest on reaching its first church or home.
The wood panels are primed with two coats of rabbit skin glue and then the linen is glued in place. The linen is coated twice with glue and whiting primer and allowed to dry, then a further fifteen coats of gesso applied. This takes place over six or so days.
Special boards such us Royal Doors for the Church of St Nicholas in Amsterdam can be made in our workshop, please enquire for a quotation.