Carving The Uncommon Bottlestopper

Each year, the California Carvers Guild holds the Cholula Whittle-Off in conjunction with the club’s annual show. Contestants are given 1 hour and 45 minuets to whittle the basswood bottle stoppers into ribbon-winning carvings.

Terrific projects for every carver.

We thought you might like to explore the carving possibilities of the common botle stopper as we are literally go coast to coast. Our first stoip is at the California Carvers Guild’s well-known Cholula Whittle-Off. Next - check out the competition from the Northern Virginia Wood Carvers. Finally, we’ll end up with five neat patterns from Dogpatch’s own Harold Enlow. When you’re finished, you’ll see that there’s no such thing as a “typical” stopper. - Editors

Give a carver a bottle of hot sauce and you’ll stimulate not only his taste buds, but also get his creative juices flowing. Take Don Elmore for example. For three years running, he has turned.

Don Elmore of Grass Valley, California, won first place in the Cholula Whittle Off for the third year in a row. Don’s key to creating a winning carving in timed contests like this one is to concentrate on the facial features. He carves the eyes, nose and mouth first and then works on the remaining features.

Take Don Elmore for example. For three years running, he has turned the wooden stopper on a bottle of Cholula Hot Sauce into a first place wood carving. But is it really the hot sauce that got him fired up enough to win top honors three years in a row?

“No,” chuckles Don. “ I like hot sauce... and Cholula is really good. But no, it’s the challenge of the contest that gets me going.”

The contest, officially dubbed the Cholula Whittle-Off, is just one of the many events held each year at the California Carvers Guild’s annual carving competition. Held this past year on September 11, the Whittle-Off drew more than 30 carvers, mostly CCG members, to the Hamlet at Moonstone Gardens in Cambria, California.

Each carver was given a 4" x 2" x 2" basswood egg with the bottom leveled off and one hour and 45 minutes to come up with a winning carving. Don used about an hour and 35 minutes to carve the face in his stopper, and then spent the last 10 minutes cleaning up the cuts.

“In a timed contest like this one, I like to carve the eyes and nose and mouth first,” Don says. “That’s the main thing the judges look at. The hair and the ears and such are important, but they can go by the wayside if need be. That way, if I don’t have enough time to really make the rest of the carving exactly the way I want it, I still have a good chance at winning because the face is good.”

Second place in the Cholula Whittle-Off went to Kevin Bevill of Santa Cruz, California, for this caricature carving.

Don turned the idea for the face on the bottle stopper over and over in his mind for several months before the contest. But in fairness to the other carvers, he never sketched out a pattern for the face or made a practice carving.

“I concentrated on the expression,” he says. “I knew that the more expression I could get into the face, the better the chances of winning.”

According to CCG certified judge Lou McNeil, picking the winners for the Cholula Whittle-Off gets harder and harder each year, mostly due to the increasing skill levels of the participants.

“We’ve had a steady increase in the number of carvers who participate each year,” Lou says. “And each year, we get carvers who are more and more proficient.”

Lou estimates that about three-quarters of the carvers at this past year’s Cholula Whittle-Off were expert carvers; the rest of the carvers were carving at an advanced skill level.

Third place was awarded to Hal Rooker of Fresno, California, for this chip carving. Judges were impressed by the creativity of the carver and with his clean cuts.

Because the contest is “anything goes” — carvers can carve faces, animals, objects — a team of judges worked together to whittle down the number of contestants to three. Don Pert and George Morris, both CCG certified judges as well, joined Lou choose the top three carvings.

The judges looked first for originality and second for cleanliness of cuts. After about half an hour, the judges announced their final selections.

For his efforts, Don was awarded a set of five large and five small Flex Tools valued at about $200. Second place and a slightly smaller set of Flex Tools was awarded to Kevin Bevill of Santa Cruz, California. Third place and yet another set of Flex Tools went to Hal Rooker of Fresno, California. Their bottle stoppers — along with all the other stoppers, both winning and non-winning from the past three years — are currently displayed in the CCG Museum in San Simeon, California.

CCG President Gary Youngs is more than pleased with the continuing success of the Cholula Whittle-Off.

Ralph also won second place in the contest with this bottle stopper carving of a mule. Both the bottle and the mule were carved from basswood.

“We have a unique contest here, one that is growing in popularity each year,” Gary says. “The detail and quality of the entries is always phenomenal. I’ve been carving for 25 years now, and I’m always amazed at what the carvers can come up with in the space of an hour and 45 minutes.”

The idea for the Cholula Whittle-Off stemmed from a number of carvers who frequented a favorite restaurant, Rosa’s Cantina, when in town for the annual CCG carving competition. While waiting for their food, the hungry carvers would whittle away at the wooden stoppers that topped the bottles of hot sauce at the tables. Their hard work would be presented to their waitresses or left on the table for other customers to enjoy. By 1995, the whittled bottle stoppers became the focus of an official CCG competition held at the Cantina.

Today, the Cholula Whittle-Off is sponsored by the CCG, Rosa’s Cantina and Cuervo International, the company that manufactures the hot sauce. The original hardwood bottle stoppers are now replaced with basswood stoppers to make the task of carving a little easier, a new power carving division has been added and, due to the increasing number of participants, the site of the contest has been moved to the Hamlet at Mill Stone Gardens — but the spirit remains the same.

“The atmosphere is great,” Lou says. “CCG members are scattered all over the state, but we all know each other. It’s a lot of fun to get together and see what a little hot sauce can do for basswood.”

East Coast Corkers

Competitions featuring creatively carved bottle stoppers are not limited to the West Coast. For the past two years, the Northern Virginia Carvers and Mountain Heritage Crafters have sponsored a bottle stopper contest that routinely brings creative carvers to the front line.

Part of the their annual Artistry in Wood Show, the NVWC’s bottle stopper contest is organized a little differently than the California Carvers Guild’s Cholula Whittle-Off. Bottle stoppers can be carved any time over the previous year, and the competition is held on three levels: novice, intermediate and advanced. No subject is taboo — as long as the “corker” is in good taste — and entries must include a cork stopper and be ready for display.

Mountain Heritage Crafters, a Bluefield, Virginia, mail-order business that sells tools and books for carvers, provides gift certificates for the first place winner in each division. Novice winners receive a $50 gift certificate, intermediate winners receive a $75 gift certificate, and advanced winners receive a $100 gift certificate.

This past year, Ralph Rogo of Tuxedo, New York, entered three bottle stoppers into the advanced division. His carving of a young hillbilly with a flying squirrel perched atop his hat took first place, and his mule with a carved bottle of “Old Mule Kick” took second place. Ralph’s third entry, a Scotchman with a beret, didn’t place.

Ralph’s pieces are carved in basswood, painted with acrylics, and finished with an oil stain. Most of his bottle stoppers are fastened to corks from old wine bottles and end up right back on their bottles once he gets home.

“Carve something different and you always have a chance of getting noticed,” Ralph says. “But carve something generic, and you’ll never go anywhere.”