Wood Burned Portraits and Memorial Plaques.

Welcome to Burnt Relic! I offer handmade custom wood burned portraits and memorial plaques of your loved ones based on your qualifying photos. I draw each piece in pencil as a rough draft. Then I carefully burn the details by hand with pyrography pens using various nibs. Further detailing with chisels, and a Dremel. Finally, the artwork gets Mod Podge and Resin as sealants. If you’d like, request an Immortal Rose to pair with your plaque for an additional charge.

I use soldering iron type tools to make these plaques. Currently, I use a Colwood “Cub” along with the many pens aka wands that you see in the following image.

This process takes many hours and offers an old world hand crafted charm that the modern era lasers and printers just can’t match.

A Quick History Lesson.

In the really old days before the use of electricity, pyrographers would heat up pokers in the fireplace, to burn a mark or two. Then they would tediously repeat that process to get the same effect as the Colwood and the various specialty nibs. That was when the craft was known as Poker Art.

Modern Adaptation.

The modern pyrography equipment is slightly faster, due to not having to wait as long for the tips to heat up. Which is much safer due to using electricity as opposed to an open fire. The professional units have temperature control, which helps with finding the right tones.

When making portraits and pyrography memorial plaques I prefer to use artist grade kiln-dried Basswood as it offers a consistent light colored grain and is the ideal hardness. Most of the examples that you see on this site are on basswood planks that include a live edge.

Cherry and Soft Maple are decent wood choices as well for memorial plaques. But they are more expensive and are more difficult to work with as the texture and grain have different qualities.

Portraits & Memorial Plaques in the Making: