WOOD-CARVING, the process whereby wood is ornamented with design by means of sharp cutting tools held in the hand. The term includes anything within the limit of sculpture in the round up to hand-worked mouldings such as help to compose the tracery of screens, &c.
Material.—The texture of wood limits the scope of the carver in that the substance consists of bundles of fibres (called grain) growing in a vertical direction without much lateral cohesive strength. It is therefore essential to arrange the more delicate parts of a design “with the grain” instead of across it, and the more slender stalks or leaf-points should not be too much separated from their adjacent surroundings. The failure to appreciate these primary rules may constantly be seen in damaged work, when it will be noticed that, whereas tendrils, tips of birds' beaks, &c., arranged across the grain have been broken away, similar details designed more in harmony with the growth of the wood and not too deeply undercut remain intact. Oak is the most suitable wood for carving, on account of its durability and toughness without being too hard. Chestnut (very like oak), American walnut, mahogany and teak are also very good woods; while for fine work Italian walnut, lime, sycamore, apple, pear or plum, are generally chosen. Decoration that is to be painted and of not too delicate a nature is as a rule carved in pine.
Tools.—The carver requires but few kinds of tools:—(1) the gouge—a tool with a curved cutting edge—used in a variety of forms and sizes for carving hollows, rounds and sweeping curves; (2) the chisel, large and small, whose straight cutting edge is used for lines and cleaning up flat surfaces; (3) the “V” tool used for veining, and in certain classes of flat work for emphasizing lines. A special screw for fixing work to the bench, and a mallet, complete the carver's kit, though other tools, more or less legitimate, are often used, such as a router for bringing grounds to a uniform level, bent gouges and bent chisels for cutting hollows too deep for the ordinary tool.
Method.—The process for relief carving is usually as follows. The carver first fixes the wood to his bench by means of the screw already referred to. He then (a) sketches on the main lines of his idea, indicating the flowers, foliage, &c.; or (b) should the design be very intricate or of a geometrical character, he traces the whole design from a pattern first prepared on paper; or (c) he may combine the first two methods. Next he grounds out the spaces between the lines with a gouge to a more or less uniform depth. Then he “bosts” the upstanding pattern that remains, i.e. he models and shapes the details of his design, carefully balancing the lights and shadows; and finally, after having obtained the result he desires, he cleans up the whole. The quicker he works, the fewer times he goes over the same part, the more sketchy the subsidiary portions, the less high finish he puts into the detail, the better the result. Incised work, chip-carving, &c., are generally finished at once and not in stages. Much carved work, that of savage nations for instance, is of course carved without the assistance of a bench. Many small articles, too, are carved in the hand. Little models of antelopes or bears, so familiar in Switzerland, are carved in this way with a tool somewhat like a half-open knife but with the blade fixed.
Style.—From the remotest ages the decoration of wood has been a foremost art. The tendency of human nature has always been to ornament every article in use. Just as a child of to-day instinctively cuts patterns on the bark of his switch freshly taken from the hedgerow, so the primitive man, to say nothing of his more civilized successor, has from the earliest times cut designs on every wooden article he is accustomed to handle. The North American Indian carves his wooden fish-hook or his pipe stem just as the Polynesian works patterns on his paddle. The native of British Guiana decorates his cavassa grater with a well-conceived scheme of incised scrolls, while the savage of Loango Bay distorts his spoon with a hopelessly unsuitable design of perhaps figures standing up in full relief carrying a hammock.
Figure-work seems to have been universal. The craving to
represent one's god in a tangible form finds expression in numberless
ways. The early carver, and, for that matter, the native
of the present day, has always found a difficulty in
giving expression to the eye, and at all times has evaded
Figure
work.
it by inlaying this feature with coloured material.
Obsidian, for example, is used by the modern Easter Islander
in common with the Egyptian craftsman of the earlier dynasties.
To carve a figure in wood is not only more difficult but is less
satisfactory than marble (for which see Sculpture), owing to the
tendency of wood to crack, to be injured by insects, or to suffer
from changes in the atmosphere. The texture of the material,
too, often proves fatal to the expression of the features, especially
in the classic type of youthful face. On the other hand, magnificent
examples exist of the more rugged features of age: the
beetling brows, the furrows and lines neutralizing the defects
of the grain of the wood. However, in ancient work the surface
was not of such consequence, for figures as a rule were painted.
It is not always realized at the present day to what extent colour has even from the most ancient times been used to enhance the effect of wood-carving and sculpture. The modern prejudice against gold and other tints is perhaps due to the fact that painted work has been vulgarized. One associatesColour. coloured carvings too readily with theatre galleries and the triumphal car of the circus procession. The “restored” work too of some church screens does anything but encourage the revival of this time-honoured custom. The arrangement of a proper and harmonious scheme of colour is not the work of the house painter, but of the specially trained artist. Witness the old coloured screens of Norfolk, the harmonious greens and reds, the proper proportion of gold, the panels adorned with saints on backgrounds of delicate diaper work, and compare these triumphs of decoration with the rougher blues and reds of the average restored screen, and one ceases to wonder why we now prefer the wood plain.
Of late years carving has gone out of fashion; a change has come about. The work is necessarily slow, thus causing charges to appear high. Other and cheaper methods of decoration have driven carving from its former place. Machine work has much to answer for, and the endeavour to popularize the craft by means of the village class has not always achieved its own end. The gradual disappearance of the individual artist, elbowed out as he has been by the contractor, is fatal to the continuance of an art which can never flourish when done at so much a yard. So long as the carver is expected to work to some one else's pattern—so long as he is, in detail at least, not his own designer—this art, which attained its zenith in the glories of the 15th-century cathedral and in the continental domestic work of the hundred years to follow, can never hope to live again.
Ancient Work before the Christian Era.—The extreme dryness of the climate of Egypt accounts for the existence of a number of wood-carvings from this remote period (see Egypt: Art and Archaeology). Some wood panels from the tomb of Hosui at Sakkarah are of the III. dynasty (over 4000 B.C.). Egypt.The carving consists of hieroglyphs and figures in low relief, and the style is extremely delicate and fine. A stool shown on one of the panels has the legs shaped like the fore and hind limbs of an animal, a form common in Egypt for thousands of years.
In the Cairo museum may be seen the statue of a man of 50
years of age, of the period of the great pyramid, possibly 4000 B.C.
The expression of the face and the realism of the carriage
have never been surpassed by any Egyptian sculptor of
Figure
work.this or any other period. The figure is carved out of a
solid block of sycamore, and in accordance with the Egyptian
custom the arms are joined on. The eyes are inlaid with pieces of
opaque white quartz, with a line of bronze surrounding to imitate the
lid; a small disk of transparent rock crystal forms the iris, while a
tiny bit of polished ebony fixed behind the crystal imparts to it a
lifelike sparkle. “The IV., V. and VI. dynasties cover the finest
period of Egyptian sculpture. The statues found in the tombs show
a freedom of treatment which was never reached in later times.
They are all portraits, which the artist strove his utmost to render
exactly like his model. For these are not, like more modern statues,
simply works of art, but had primarily a religious signification”
(Maspero). As the spirits of the deceased might inhabit these
“Ka” statues, the features and proportions were closely copied.
There are to be found in the principal museums of Europe many Egyptian examples of the utmost interest—mummy cases of human
