There is a size of painting where a standard lyre easel starts telling you about it. The canvas is fine, the easel holds it fine, and yet every time you lean into the top corner with any intent the whole surface gives a little. Not enough to be dangerous. Just enough to be in the way of a confident mark.

The Mabef M12 is the lyre easel built for that size of work. It takes 137cm of canvas, which is the tallest in Mabef's lyre range, and the mast reaches 260cm. Underneath the surface there is an anti vibration inner spring, which is the part you will not see in a photo and will notice within five minutes of using it.

Add the widest tray in the range at 62cm, a broad 70 by 86cm base, and a ratchet with sliding canvas supports, and you have an easel that simply stops arguing with you about scale.

Perfect for

What makes the M12 different

Big means the canvas, not the load

This is worth being clear about because the name invites the wrong assumption. The M12 carries 10kg, which is exactly what the M11, the M13, the M20 and the M25 carry. Every lyre easel Mabef make has the same load rating. What Big buys you is reach and surface area, not strength.

So if your canvases are tall but conventionally built, the M12 is a genuine step up and the extra 12cm plus the spring will change how the easel feels. If your canvases are heavy, deep framed linen or anything approaching ten kilograms, the honest answer is that no lyre easel is the right tool and you should be looking at an H frame like the M18, which takes thirty.

Why steam treated beech

Mabef build in solid beech, steam treated before it is worked, then oiled and stain resistant. The treatment settles the timber and takes the movement out of it in advance. On a mast that stands 260cm tall, that stability is the difference between an easel that is dead straight in ten years and one that has quietly developed a bow you have to work around.

The oiled finish is the practical half. Paint sits on the surface rather than soaking into the grain, so a wipe with a rag keeps it looking like an easel and not 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 M12, this easel, adds canvas height, mast reach and the widest tray. The M11 Inclinable adds a 15 degree forward tilt for pastel and loses the anti vibration spring. The M20 Display strips out the ratchet for weight and price, and is the only one Mabef rate for outdoors. The M25 Convertible is the one that lies flat for watercolour. All five 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 M12

Give it the wider stance it wants. The base is 70 by 86cm and it is that deep for a reason. Pushed hard against a wall it cannot do its job, so leave it room behind.

Use both sliding supports. Set the bottom one to bring the work to your eye line and the top one to hold the canvas steady. That is what takes the last of the movement out.

Load the canvas before the final ratchet adjustment. It is easier to set with the weight already on it, and the painting ends up where your eye wants it rather than where it looked right empty.

Store it upright. A 260cm mast left propped at an angle for months is how a lean starts, in any wooden easel.

Then put the big canvas up and lean into the top corner without the surface answering back. That is what the extra size and the spring are for, and it is a quietly excellent thing to stop thinking about.

Questions about the Mabef M12 Big Lyre Easel