Wood Carving

Wood carving is a form of working wood by means of a cutting tool held in the hand, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object. The phrase may also refer to the finished product, from individual sculptures, to hand-worked mouldings composing part of a tracery.

Some of the finest extant examples of early wood carving are from the Middle Ages in Italy and France, where the typical themes of that era were Christian iconography. In England many complete examples remain from the 16th and 17th century, where oak was the preferred medium in this case.

Figural carving seems to have been widespread. The carving 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 found a difficulty in giving expression to the eye, and at times has evaded it by inlaying this feature with colored material.

More About Woodcarving

as an art form, includes any kind of sculpture in wood, from the decorative bas-relief on small objects to life-size figures in the round, furniture, and architectural decorations.
The woods used vary greatly in hardness and grain. The most commonly employed woods include boxwood, pine, pear, walnut, willow, oak, and ebony. The tools are simple gouges, chisels, wooden mallets, and pointed instruments. Although they were universally one of the earliest art media, wood carvings have withstood poorly the vicissitudes of time and climate. A few ancient examples have been preserved in the dry climate of Egypt, e.g., the wooden statue of Sheik-el-Beled (Cairo) from the Old Kingdom.
The carving of wooden masks and statuettes was common to the African tribes, and totem poles were used for the basic religious rites of the tribes of the Northwest Coast of America. The wooden objects of Oceania include animated designs, incised and in relief, on canoes and large standing figures. In Japan and China wooden carvings have long been used to decorate temples and private dwellings. The Muslim countries of North Africa abound in intricate architectural carvings.
In Europe wood carving was highly developed in Scandinavia, and examples have been preserved of 10th- and 11th-century work. In England the Gothic period produced extremely fine carving, especially on choir stalls and rood screens. Although the Puritans destroyed much of this, enough has been preserved to show its beautiful workmanship. In France wood carving was also a part of religious art, and there the carved altarpieces were especially notable. Italian wood carving flourished during the Gothic period in Pisa, Siena, and Florence, as well as in the southern monasteries; during the Renaissance it remained an adjunct of Italian artistic development.
Many of the 15th- and 16th-century artists in Germany worked in wood, creating monumental sculptures and altarpieces; among the greatest were Hans Multscher, Michael Pacher, Veit Stoss, and Tilman Riemenschneider. Fine retables were also created in Flanders and Spain. After the Renaissance wood carving went into a slight decline. It had a revival in the early 18th cent. when Grinling Gibbons in London carved for Sir Christopher Wren's buildings. In colonial America fine ships' figureheads and many other pieces now considered important folk art were executed in wood.
The 20th cent. has seen a resurgence of interest in the medium of wood. Notable modern sculptors who have used wood include Archipenko, Barlach, Henry Moore, and the Finnish Tapio Virkkala. An appreciation of the basic materialthe grain and texture of woodled many figurative artists including William Zorach, Chaim Gross, Robert Laurent, and José de Creeft to work with wood. Wood has also held a fascination for some abstract artists, notably Louise Nevelson who created large, intricate sculptural compositions of carved and turned wood forms.