Watercolourists have been quietly putting up with this for a very long time. You can have an easel, or you can have a flat surface, and whichever one you own is the wrong one about half the time. So there is a table under the window for the wet work and an easel in the corner for everything else, and the studio slowly fills with furniture instead of paintings.

The Mabef M18 is the large studio easel that does both properly. The canvas holder reclines from fully vertical through to fully horizontal and locks at any angle on the way. Flat, it is a table at 82cm, which is standing desk height rather than the stooping compromise most convertibles give you.

And it does that without being a small easel making a big claim. The mast telescopes to hold a 225cm canvas. The holder takes 30kg. Underneath there is a full width storage shelf and four castors, so a 23.5kg piece of Italian beech moves when you want it to and stays put when you do not.

Perfect for

What makes the M18 different

The flat position is the point, so here is what it is actually like

Plenty of easels tilt a few degrees and call themselves adjustable. The M18 takes the canvas holder the entire way from upright to level and holds it wherever you stop. That changes what you can do without changing rooms. Watercolour washes sit where you put them. Pours behave. Ink and gilding stop running off the bottom edge of the work. Then it comes back up and it is a serious vertical easel again.

The detail that makes it real rather than a brochure feature is the height. Flat, the surface is at 82cm. That is a proper work bench, so you are standing comfortably rather than bent over something knee high. Lay a board across it and you have a large flat table that happens to stand up again afterwards, which is a useful thing in a studio where floor space is the real currency.

Why beech, and why steam treated

Mabef build in oiled, stain resistant beech, steam treated before it is worked. Beech is dense and dimensionally stable, and the treatment settles the timber before it ever becomes an easel. On a frame that stands over three and a half metres at full extension, that stability is not a nice detail, it is the whole reason the thing stays square and the ratchet keeps biting years later.

The oiled finish is the practical half. Paint sits on the surface instead of soaking into the grain, so a wipe with a rag keeps it looking like an easel rather than a palette. There is no lacquer to chip and nothing to re-coat.

Specifications

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

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 M18

Check your ceiling before you order. At full extension the mast reaches 375cm. Most homes cannot go near that, which is fine, it simply means you have more adjustment than you will ever use. It is worth knowing rather than discovering.

Assemble it where it will live. It bolts together in about an hour with two people, and it is considerably easier to build in the room than to carry up a staircase afterwards.

Level it properly on day one. Run the castors to where you want it, then wind the levelling bolts down until it stops rocking. Old floors are never flat, and a big easel finds every millimetre of it.

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

Wipe the ledge down while paint is still wet. Oiled beech forgives a great deal, but cured paint in the ratchet teeth does nobody any favours.

Then use the thing properly. Put the big canvas up. Lay it flat for the wash and stand it up for the detail, in the same hour, without moving the painting to another room. That is the entire argument for this easel and it is a very good one.

Questions about the Mabef M18 Convertible Studio Easel