Anyone who has worked seriously in pastel knows the moment. You are an hour in, the thing is going well, and you step back to look at it and realise the bottom third has gone slightly grey. Not because you put grey there. Because every stroke you made in the top two thirds has been quietly raining down onto it for an hour.

The Mabef M11 is the lyre easel built to stop that happening. The central mast inclines forward by up to 15 degrees, which tips the working surface just past vertical. Dust leaves the paper and lands on the floor, where it belongs and where a drop sheet can deal with it.

Fifteen degrees does not sound like much and it changes everything about working in a dusty medium. It is also quietly useful in oil and acrylic, because the same rake takes the studio light off a wet surface and lets you actually see the colour you have just mixed.

Perfect for

What makes the M11 different

Inclinable is not convertible, and the difference matters

These two words get used loosely and they mean very different things. The M11 inclines. The mast rakes forward up to 15 degrees and stops there. The M25 converts, folding down into a flat table for watercolour work. Both are lyre easels, both are excellent, and they solve different problems.

Mabef themselves draw the line clearly. The M11 is tagged for oil, acrylic, pastel and display. Watercolour is deliberately absent from that list, and it is present on the M25. If you have arrived here looking for an easel that lies flat, the M25 is the one you want and we would rather point you at it than sell you the wrong thing.

Why steam treated beech

Mabef build in solid beech, steam treated before it is worked, then oiled and finished stain resistant. The treatment settles the timber and takes the movement out of it before it ever becomes an easel. On an easel whose entire selling point is a mast that holds an angle under load, that stability is not a nice detail, it is the mechanism.

The oiled finish is the practical half. Pastel dust and wet paint sit on the surface instead of working into the grain, so a wipe keeps it looking like an easel rather than a palette.

Specifications

For full details of the Mabef warranty, including how to register your easel, see the Mabef warranty page.

Choosing between the Mabef lyre easels

We stock the range, so here is the honest short version. The M13 Basic is the baseline and everything else is the M13 plus one thing. The M11, this easel, adds the forward tilt. The M12 Big adds canvas height and an anti vibration spring but has no tilt at all. The M20 Display strips out the ratchet to get the weight and the price down, and it is the only one Mabef rate for outdoor use. The M25 Convertible is the one that lies flat. They all carry 10kg.

Mabef, and why we carry so much of it

Mabef have been making easels in Italy since 1948 and have never once diversified into anything else. No brushes, no paint, no pencil cases. Just easels, for three quarters of a century, by a family who clearly think about hinges more than is strictly healthy. We find that faintly wonderful, and it shows in the joinery and in the warranty they are willing to put behind it.

Art Shed carries over forty Mabef lines, one of the deepest Mabef ranges in Australia: field easels, studio masts with cranks, lyre easels, sketch boxes, table easels, sculpture trestles, print racks, stools and the full run of beech palettes. Not a token three models and a special order form. If you are building a studio around Mabef, or matching an easel you already own, we almost certainly have the rest of the family in stock.

Getting the most out of your M11

Set the tilt before you load the canvas, then check it after. The angle feels different with weight on it, and it is easier to adjust empty and fine tune loaded than to wrestle it with a full sheet in place.

Work the ratchet, not your back. Move the canvas to your eye line rather than stooping to meet it. That is what the ratchet is for and pastel sessions are long.

Keep the tray clear of loose pastel. Dust in the ratchet teeth is the one thing that shortens the life of this easel, and it comes from resting sticks in the tray rather than in a box.

Store it upright and closed down. A long mast left leaning at an angle for months is how a lean starts, in any wooden easel.

Then lean it forward and do an afternoon of pastel without watching the bottom of the paper go grey. That is what this easel is for and it is a very satisfying problem to stop having.

Questions about the Mabef M11 Inclinable Lyre Easel