Please Help Identify!

[sherri719]

Hello All:

I'm completely new to this and only have one piece. I bought what appears to be a very old wood carving (seems very rustic, hand carved, whittled?) of a black man sitting in a chair with his hands in his pockets, barefoot. (about 11 - 12 inches high) I bought this at a thrift store. There's no signature, but just deliberate scrape marks on bottom of carving. I will attempt to attach 3 pics I have of it (if possible) as I'm sure it would be much more helpful. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[tucker1931]

Sherrie, would love to see the carving, can't open the pix. Try to hit enter after you type in the name on each one. (may work)
Cliff

[Al_Hillis]

Sherrie welcome to the forum,.
I cant really help you with Identifying it but I can give you my two cents worth , Looks to me that it could be ironwood out off Mexico or South America . Could even be Maghogany from Asia or Europe.. Could you find a carpenter or lumber dealer around you , he or she could possibly identify the type of wood , then you would know where it came from anyway

[BobD]

Hey Gang,
I moved this thread into the general section. The Author Questions section is only for specific questions for WCI or Fox Chapel authors, and it's moderated. So every post must be approved by a moderator.

Best regards,
Bob Duncan
Technical Editor

[sherri719]

Slather,

Thanks for the info - I never thought about checking into what type of wood it is. As I said, I'm completely new to this! I do have one more question if you can possibly answer this: is it common for some wood carvings (especially if very old) to have the scrape marks on the bottom for some type of signature or identifier? I'm asking this because they don't appear to be wear marks or something that accidentally scratched or damaged it. They seem like they're meant to be on the piece. Any info you can offer is greatly appreciated! I just hope this reply gets to you, I've retyped twice already but I seem to get errors - this message board is a little confusing to me. I'm obviously not doing something right here!

[Aa Smokey]

At first I thought that the marks on the base(bottom) might be saw marks from the initial harvesting of the wood, but the inconsistant angles won't justify this. After a closer look I believe the marks to be from the carver "testing his tools" to check for sharpness. (I do the same thing) I would guess that the carving is African in origin, possibly Ivory Coast.

[Ashbys]

Sherri,

It is almost impossible to determine where a carving like this is from or how old it may be. There are literally thousands of carvings imported to the US daily. Then how they are cared for can make them seem much older than they are. Beyond the fact many are made to look old that are new. So to put in perspective , no name , no date , very difficult.

It could be a carving from a slave to a carving made last year and intentionally aged to give the impression of being much older. There are ways you can trace it to a date but the processes are expensive.

hope this helps

Ash

[sherri719]

Dear Ashbys,

Thank you so much for responding. Any information or advice I receive is very helpful to me. Yes, it has been quite difficult finding anything on this piece. I would like to add that I registered for a low cost expert opinion (not appraisal - - cost me $6.00 to have access for a 5 day minimum, then $2.25 for each question you have about the item) at experts@wiw2u.com ("What's It Worth To You") and got a response a little earlier today. I hope she's wrong (LOL!), but she said she thought that it was probably a 20th century tourist piece that may have come from Africa, and that the value probably wouldn't even be worth the cost of getting an appraisal on it. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this one's going to turn out to be my "pot of gold."!

[Aa Smokey]

You may not be able to pin down the exact carver or its value but you can eliminate what basic design or style it is not. Looking at the carvings of the interior peoples, it lacks the stylised (Bloated) proportions, if you compare it to the carvings of the Masii, it doesnt have the long skinny legs and arms that most of thier carvings have. If you compare it to the watussi, it doesn't have the long ,exaggerated ears and limbs. And so on and on. It does have some of the elements of the far western African pieces done in the 60's for the export trade.Ivory Coast). Opinion