Most of us end up owning the wrong furniture for half of what we do. There is an easel for the oils and a table for the watercolours, and the two of them take up a corner each, and the medium you feel like working in on a given morning quietly depends on which one is clear.

The Mabef M25 is the lyre easel that does both jobs. Upright it holds 198cm of canvas, which is a serious vertical easel by any measure. Fold it in half and it becomes a flat table at 92cm, which is standing work height. In between it rakes forward up to 15 degrees for pastel or to take the glare off wet paint.

Three positions, one footprint, nine kilograms. Mabef tag the M25 for oil, acrylic, pastel and watercolour, and it is the only easel in their lyre range tagged for all four. That is not marketing, it is a straightforward description of what it can do.

Perfect for

What makes the M25 different

The number we want you to see before you buy

Flat, the M25 gives you a working surface of 99cm, not 198cm. That is because the conversion works by folding the easel in half, so the flat mode is roughly half the upright reach. It is the single most important thing to understand about this easel and the thing most likely to disappoint someone who did not know.

So here is the honest framing. The M25 is a tall vertical easel that also gives you a proper medium sized flat table, in one piece of furniture, at lyre easel weight and price. That is genuinely excellent and it suits an enormous number of painters. What it is not is a two metre flat table. If that is what you need, the M18 studio convertible reclines rather than folds, so you keep the full surface, and it is the easel to look at instead.

Why steam treated beech

Mabef build in solid beech, steam treated before it is worked, then oiled and stain resistant. On this easel more than most, that stability is the mechanism rather than a nice detail. An easel that hinges in the middle has to keep folding square and locking solid, year after year, and timber that has moved will not do that.

The oiled finish is the practical half, and it matters more here than on a purely vertical easel. Flat surfaces collect spills. Paint and water sit on the oiled surface instead of soaking into the grain, so a wipe with a rag deals with it.

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 M25, this easel, is the only one that lies flat, and it trades away the ratchet and the anti vibration spring to get there. The M11 Inclinable rakes forward 15 degrees but does not go flat. The M12 Big takes the tallest canvas and has the steadying spring, with no tilt at all. The M20 Display is the lightest and the only one Mabef rate for outdoors. 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 M25

Practise the conversion once with nothing on it. Learn where the hinge and the locks are while the easel is empty and you are not holding a wet painting. It takes a minute and it saves a panic.

Check it is locked before you load it flat. Both positions are solid when set properly. The time to find out something has not seated is before the paper goes down, not after.

Wipe spills straight away in the flat position. Oiled beech forgives a great deal, and a horizontal surface holds a puddle in a way a vertical one never will.

Store it upright and closed. Same as any wooden easel. A long frame left propped at an angle for months is how a lean begins.

Then work the way you actually want to rather than the way your furniture allows. Wash flat, draw upright, finish raked forward under the light. One easel, one corner, no compromises you did not choose.

Questions about the Mabef M25 Convertible Lyre Easel