Society of
Ornamental Turners (SOT)
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The craft of Ornamental Turning has been practised since the 15th century. It very soon became the pursuit of kings and the nobility of Europe. George III had a lathe, as had many of the royal families of Europe and Scandinavia, and Peter the Great had a vast workshop with many complex lathes.
Its popularity spread among the gentry and middle classes of Georgian and Victorian England and it became the fashionable pastime of the mechanically minded and artistically inclined amateur. Interest then declined alongside the reduction in prosperity between the wars and the advent of the motor car.
The hobby was revived by the formation of the Society of Ornamental Turners in 1948 with the object of encouraging, developing and promoting the study and practice of the art and science of ornamental turning. From a small beginning the Society grew steadily until the relatively recent emergence of 'art turning' which has stimulated a more rapid expansion. The Society now has more than 300 members throughout the world.
Ornamental Turning is done on a lathe with attachments that convert the plain circular profile of normally turned objects to variants of outline. These range from a series of cuts by a rotating cutter taken at predetermined intervals around the work (so producing grooves or bumps on the surface), to non circular movements of the lathe, whereby part or all of the circular profile is removed to give a completely different form, examples being multi-centred, elliptical, polygonal and roseate.
External Link: www.the-sot.com