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wood carving

 
Dictionary: Wood·work
Home > Library > Literature & Language > Webster 1913

n.

Work made of wood; that part of any structure which is wrought of wood.


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Sci-Tech Encyclopedia: Woodworking
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The shaping and assembling of wood and wood products into finished articles such as mold patterns, furniture, window sashes and frames, and boats. The pronounced grain of wood requires modifications in the working techniques when cutting with the grain and when cutting across it. Five principal woodworking operations are sawing, planing, steam bending, gluing, and finishing. To shape round pieces, wood is worked on a lathe. See also Turning (woodworking).

Wood is sawed by cutting or splitting its fibers by the continuous action of a series of uniformly spaced teeth alternately staggered to move in closely parallel work planes. Action of the cutting teeth produces a path or kerf of uniform width through the workpiece from which the fibers have been severed and removed. Sawing across the grain or cell structure of the wood is called crosscutting. Cutting parallel with the grain of the piece is referred to as ripping. Saw teeth are bent alternately to the left and right to provide clearance for the blade. Some blades include straight raker teeth for cleaning fibers from the cut.

Flat or uniformly contoured surfaces of wood are roughed down, smoothed, or made level by the shaving and cutting action of a wide-edged blade or blades. Planing may be accomplished either manually or by power-operated tools.

Wooden members are bent or formed to a desired shape by pressure after they have been softened or plasticized by heat and moisture. If thick pieces of wood are to be bent to a permanent shape without breaking, some form of softening or plasticizing such as steaming is necessary. When a piece of wood is bent, its outer or convex side is actually stretched in tension while its concave side is simultaneously compressed. Actually, plasticized wood can be stretched but little. It can, however, be compressed a considerable amount. When a piece of plasticized wood is successfully bent, the deformation is chiefly compression distributed almost uniformly over the curved portion. Curvature results from many minute folds, wrinkles, and slippages in the compressed area.

Wood pieces may be fastened together by the adhesive qualities of a substance that sets or hardens into a permanent bond. Adhesives for wood are of two principal types, synthetic and natural-origin. The term glue was first applied to bonding materials of natural origin, while adhesive has been used to describe those of synthetic composition. See also Adhesive.

The finishing operation is the preparation and sealing or covering of a surface with a suitable substance in order to preserve it or to give it a desired appearance. The preparation and conditioning of a surface may include cleaning, sanding, use of steel wool, removing or covering nails and screws, gluing or fastening loose pieces, filling cracks and holes with putty or crack filler, shellacking, and dusting. An inconsequential item with a painted surface does not require the thorough surface preparation that a piece of fine furniture does. The quality of surface conditioning directly affects the end result. See also Wood properties.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: wood carving
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wood carving, 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 (see African art), and totem poles were used for the basic religious rites of the tribes of the Northwest Coast of America (see North American Native art). The wooden objects of Oceania include animated designs, incised and in relief, on canoes and large standing figures (see Oceanic art). In Japan and China wooden carvings have long been used to decorate temples and private dwellings (see Chinese architecture; Japanese architecture). 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 (see misericords) 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 material-the grain and texture of wood-led 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.

Bibliography

See D. Z. Meilach, Contemporary Art with Wood (1968); C. C. Carstenson, The Craft and Creation of Wood Sculpture (1971, repr. 1981); E. J. Tangerman, The Modern Book of Whittling and Woodcarving (1973); Jack C. Rich, Sculpture in Wood (1977).

Wikipedia: Woodworking
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Artists can use woodworking to create delicate sculptures.

Woodworking is the process of building, making or carving something using wood.

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History

Ancient Egyptian woodworking
Woodworking shop in Germany in 1568, the worker in front is using a bow saw, the one in the background is planing

Along with stone, mud, and animal parts, wood was certainly one of the first materials worked by primitive human beings. Microwear analysis of the Mousterian stone tools used by the Neanderthals show that many were used to work wood. The development of civilization was closely tied to the development of increasingly greater degrees of skill in working these materials.

Among early finds of wooden tools are the worked sticks from Kalambo Falls, Clacton-on-Sea and Lehringen. The spears from Schöningen (Germany) provide some of the first examples of wooden hunting gear. Flint tools were used for carving. Since Neolithic times, carved wooden vessels are known, for example, from the Linear Pottery culture wells at Kückhofen and Eythra. Examples of Bronze Age wood-carving include tree trunks worked into coffins from northern Germany and Denmarkand wooden folding-chairs. The site of Fellbach-Schmieden in Germany has provided fine examples of wooden animal statues from the Iron Age. Wooden idols from the La Tène period are known from a sanctuary at the source of the Seine in France.

Two ancient civilizations that used woodworking were the Egyptians and the Chinese. Woodworking is depicted in many ancient Egyptian drawings, and a considerable amount of ancient Egyptian furniture (such as stools, chairs, tables, beds, chests) has been preserved in tombs. As well, the inner coffins found in the tombs were also made of wood. The metal used by the Egyptians for woodworking tools was originally copper and eventually, after 2000 BC bronze as ironworking was unknown until much later.[1] Commonly used woodworking tools included axes, adzes, chisels, pull saws, and bow drills. Mortise and tenon joints are attested from the earliest Predynastic period. These joints were strengthened using peg [disambiguation needed]s, dowels and leather or cord lashings. Animal glue came to be used only in the New Kingdom period.[2] Ancient Egyptians invented the art of veneering and used varnishes for finishing, though the composition of these varnishes is unknown. Although different native acacias were used, as was the wood from the local sycamore and tamarisk trees, deforestation in the Nile valley resulted in the need for the importation of wood, notably cedar, but also Aleppo pine, boxwood and oak, starting from the Second Dynasty.[3]

The progenitors of Chinese woodworking are considered to be Lu Ban (魯班) and his wife Lady Yun, from the Spring and Autumn Period. Lu Ban is said to have brought the plane, chalkline, and other tools to China. His teachings are supposedly left behind in the book Lu Ban Jing (魯班經, "Manuscript of Lu Ban"), although it was written some 1500 years after his death. This book is filled largely with descriptions of dimensions for use in building various items such as flower pots, tables, altars, etc., and also contains extensive instructions concerning Feng Shui. It mentions almost nothing of the intricate glueless and nailless joinery for which Chinese furniture was so famous.

Materials

Historically, woodworkers relied upon the woods native to their region, until transportation and trade innovations made more exotic woods available to the craftsman. Woods can be sorted into three basic types: hardwoods typified by tight grain and derived from broadleaf trees, softwoods from coniferous trees, and man-made materials such as plywood and MDF.

Notable Woodworkers

Damascene woodworkers carving wood for hookahs, 19th century.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Leospo, Enrichetta (2001), "Woodworking in Ancient Egypt", The Art of Woodworking, Turin: Museo Egizio, p.20
  2. ^ Leospo, pp.20-21
  3. ^ Leospo, pp. 17-19

References

External links

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Dictionary. Webster 1913 Dictionary edited by Patrick J. Cassidy  Read more
Sci-Tech Encyclopedia. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Woodworking".  Read more