The advice people give about painting big is always the same, and it is always given by someone with a garage. Get a proper H frame, they say. Twenty something kilos of beech, a base you could land a plane on, and a permanent corner of the room gone forever. Which is excellent advice if you have the corner.

The Mabef M48 is for everyone who does not. The central mast slides, so the easel itself stands between 140cm and 230cm but carries a canvas up to 200cm high. The base is 49 by 61cm, roughly the floor area of a dining chair. The whole easel weighs 5.2kg, so you can lift it one handed and move it to follow the light.

And when you are finished the base closes, and it goes flat against a wall or into a cupboard. It is the only easel in the Mabef range that gets a two metre canvas into that little space and that little weight.

Perfect for

What makes the M48 different

The honest limitation, up front

The M48 carries 10kg. That is the number that decides whether this is your easel, and we would rather put it in the third paragraph than in the fine print. Ten kilograms covers a large canvas on light cotton, a big sheet of board, and almost anything a student or an acrylic painter will put on it. It does not cover a two metre heavy linen canvas in a deep hardwood frame.

So the M48 is not a smaller H frame. It is a different answer to a different question. If the question is how do I paint big in a room that also has a bed in it, this easel is very hard to beat. If the question is how do I hang thirty kilos of stretched linen, look at the M18 and accept the floor space.

Why beech

Mabef build in oiled, stain resistant beech. Beech is dense and dimensionally stable, which on a light easel matters twice over. There is less timber doing the work, so every part of it has to stay true. A sliding mast in particular has to keep sliding smoothly for years, and it only does that if the wood has not moved.

The oiled finish means paint wipes off rather than soaking into the grain. On an easel that lives in a room you also live in, that matters more than it does in a dedicated studio.

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 M48

Open the base fully every time. It closes for storage, which means it also closes when you are not paying attention. Set it out properly and check it before the canvas goes on.

Use the mast, not the frame. Raise the canvas by sliding the upper post rather than trying to work at an awkward height. That is what it is there for and it is the whole reason the easel reaches as far as it does.

Keep it away from the heaviest canvases. Ten kilograms is a real number. If you are not sure what your canvas weighs, put it on the bathroom scales once and stop wondering.

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

Then paint something far too large for the room. That is precisely what this easel was designed to let you get away with.

Questions about the Mabef M48 Smart Studio Easel