School Project

[Irish]

I recieved an email from a youg man, aged 9, who is working on a school project. He asked four basic questions.

1. How does someone learn to be a woodcarver?
2. Why do they make woodcarvings?
3. Who does woodcarving?
4. How does woodcarving meet the needs of a woodcarver/

Here is what I send him. I hope that you can add your ideas andexperiences to it for him.

Thanks, Susan


Hi Woodie,
Thanks for writing and including me in your school project.

1. In the past a man could learn wood carving by becoming the apprentice to a Master Wood Carver. He could have been as young as you are when he first began working for his Master. If you were accepted as an apprentice you would have first been responsible for small daily tasks around the studio as sweeping the floor, bring your Master his meals and perhaps helping to carry the loads of wood to the other artisans in the studio.

As you grew up in the studio, as often apprentices lived and sleep in the working area, you would have watched and learned the multitude of skills that you would one day need to become a Master Carver.

One of those basic skills was knowing the different species of woods that were available to your studio as most studios depended on locally grown and harvested timber. So if your studio was in the north eastern United States you would have used maple, white oak, black walnut, hickory, sassafras and even American chestnut but you would not have been involved with basswood or aspen as these trees grow best in the mid-western states. You also would have learned the different types of wood carving tools as round gouges, chisels, skew chisels, v-gouges and the different types of tools necessary for basic wood working construction as hand saws, coping saws, lathes, drill press or table saws.

As an apprenticed boy you would not have been allowed to do actual work on the wood but was instead an assistant to the journeymen and masters in the studio. You probably would not been actual wood working until you were in your late teens, if that early. As an apprentice you main tasks would have been 'fetch and carry' and it was not until you were a journeyman that you would finally make your first cut into the wood.

Most studios worked from a basic set of traditional carving and you would have been assign to learn to make each careful cut by using specific tools and techniques until you could produce an exact copy of your Master's carving. Journeymen could be set to make copies of one specific design and would repeat that carving over and over again as the studio's method of teaching.

The actual carving of the wood is only one small area of our craft. You would been very involved in the selection of wood, insuring that only the finest tight grain woods were purchased for the studio; the drying process of the log; the cutting of the log into usable slabs and the gluing process that makes large wood units from many wood pieces. Journeymen were also responsible for bringing commissions for new carvings into the shop, installing the finished carvings in their final setting and for over seeing the training of the apprentices.

A journeyman could work many years towards his Mastery but only a few would be granted that title. Often a man was in his forties before you had learned enough skills and developed an individual style that could earn him this highest of standings in our craft.

The Master of the studio was the person that created the newest designs of carvings or did the preliminary drawings and planning for those designs. He was and still is in today's studios the creative force behind the shop.

Although Masters did carve they often focused their attention to one of a kind, specially ordered works or in the development of new designs to be used in larger, multiple carving projects. He directed the workers in the studio as they, the journeymen and apprentices, did the actual carving for the final project that were multiple or repeated pattern carvings.

2. Wood carving is probably one of our oldest art forms. Archeology finds many stone, bone and metal carvings in their excavations of extremely old sites, many of which date back thousands of years into our past. Stone and bone are hard medias and take a long time to carve where wood is a softer material. It probably was the first carving material that our ancestor's tried. Unfortunately wood does not survive the ages as it rots or on a very cold night gets thrown upon the fire. So where we do not have artifacts of the earliest wood carvings we can assume that they were created, probably before stone and bone work.

Our earliest ancestors probably used wood carving to create simple household items as bowls, spoons and containers. Furniture was soon added to our list of craft items. Then we began to use wood as the structural material for our homes. All of these could easily have decoration, even something as simple of a series of fine lines or triangles.

Our craft truly began to grow when wood became part of any architectural structure. Corbels, lintels, posts, rosettes, roof beams and window sills might have had carved accents to enhance them. Small statues were commonly carved for churches and cathedrals to depict the deities, saints and hold men of someone's faith. The alter and tables of a church often were ornately carved wood. These large building projects were the birth of our larger carving studios as they provided the commissions for journeymen and Masters. Even today architectural projects are one of the largest source of buyers for wood carvings.

3. If you notices in your first question that I said that boys and men were the wood carvers. Until quite recently this was a very structured craft that insisted on years of method technique training and one in which only men were accepted.

However around the 1920's through 1950's a gentleman named Tangerman wrote a series of books on the craft of wood carving. Those books focused on different ethnic styles of carving and also taught specific techniques to wood carving. Mr. Tangerman's books were easily available to everyone through their local library. This opened the door to hobby wood carvers to try their hand at wood carving. Soon after this a gentleman named Ed Gallenstein began publishing a magazine named "Chip Chats" which showed pictures of what wood carvers, wood carving clubs and wood carving shows were doing.

As hobbyists we now could find books that taught us how to carve and through "Chip Chats" meet other carvers in our area. Since that time it seems that everyone carves - men and women, young and old. There were many individual craftsmen before this time from your great grandfather who probably did a little whittling while sitting on his front porch to the hobo's of the Great Depression that used small hand carved objects as canes and walking sticks to trade for their evening's housing or dinner. But these two men, Mr. Tangerman and Mr. Gallenstein, were the two that brought wood carving into the American home.

I would estimate that the number of men to women carvers is a 50/50 split. Most of us are older and nearing retirement. Retirement gives us the time to carve where a young mother or father often have too busy a daily schedule. Wood carving is often taught today in High Schools as part of the art's program of that school.

4. Oh my! What a question! I can only speak for myself, Woody. I am a trained fine artist that originally worked in oil and acrylic canvas paintings with published limited edition art prints. I have also done stoneware, porcelain and ceramic crafts and do most of what is called the Women's Arts - quilting, knitting, embroidery.

Yet once I tried my first wood carving, about 15 years ago, I knew that it would become my first love. Wood carving, unlike other arts and crafts, allows me to explore many different styles of work. I can do 3 dimension carvings that are very realistic in detail or are just fun characters of cowboys with big shoes and huge hats. I can carve wood spirits which are human faces with tree bark or leaves for hair. I can do relief carvings which are flat scenes as landscapes or wildlife nature designs.

Wood carving, once you learn the basic techniques, requires only a pattern and a piece of wood. I can put down a carving and return to it at anytime and pick up exactly where I left off in the work. It is an inexpensive craft as once you have your basic tools you only need the next design and the next piece of wood.

But most importantly to me it lets me carving those things that are most important to me and bring them into three dimensional life.

I hope that this helps you in your school project. If you have questions or need more information please write back !

Thanks, Lora S. Irish

[fpace]

Very nice Lora... I enjoyed the read myself very much.. think you nailed it!

[markken5889]

what a great response! It's so kind of you to have taken the time and energy to put into such a reply. Thanks for sharing!

Mark

[Kenny_S]

Well said Susan.

[Mottles]

Susan, I agree with the others I can't add anything. You Go Girl!
Kathy

[Claude]

Nice answer to his questions!
Claude

[uvawyo]

A well thought out and complete answer
It insires me to work hard at learning this ancient craft
Thank you
Herb