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Published in 1958, The
Carver’s Companion was a book on carving wood and stone by Peter Morton. With
a brown non-descript cloth cover, the book very much resembled a piece of wood
with a small oak leaf engraved on it. At 70 pages, it was one of the shortest
books I’ve received from the Biblio-Mat, but felt much thicker due to the 46
unnumbered photo plates pages spaced throughout.
Also a lot of in-text illustrations. |
The Carver’s Companion
began with an introduction into the art of woodcarving. Interestingly enough,
it focused on the two branching paths of apprenticeship versus art school with
arguments that could be applied to many fields of study. Through apprenticeship
there was more hands on practice but one would be limited to making the products
the shop produces. While boring, it did eventually allow you to master a task
completely and utterly. The path of art school, though, contained more theory
and explored a wide range of mediums and styles but never focuses on anything
long enough to be proficient at it. Seeing how the examples of the greatest
carvers given all started as apprentices, the book was clearly leaning towards
the side of learning through doing.
Most artsy fruit bowl ever. |
From there, the book opens up into the actual craft of
carving. Listing the tools required, which were a lot, it jumped right into exercises
to practice the art of woodcarving. This pretty much amounted to buying planks
of wood and learning how to gouge straight lines, curved lines, and intersecting
lines into the wood. Once that was practiced enough came the next steps of
carving block letters.
I own nothing that remotely like this. (This will be important later) |
Surprisingly, the next section after these basic exercises
focused on the importance of taste and design. With more focus on composition,
the information provided didn’t actually teach design as much as implant the
notion of its importance. Aspiring stone carvers were also told that they’ll
need to become woodcarvers first as the disciplines build upon the shared principles
of basic carving.
Carving made easy: Find a block of stone, then chip away anything that doesn't look like a man. |
Moving onto furniture carving, it became apparent that this
book wasn’t as much a how-to guide as it was a how-should guide. With the bulk
of the lessons basically revolving around practicing and studying how the works
of master carvers were created, it was less than useful to the carver looking
for instruction. Thankfully, the Roman lettering section included picture
guides that at least showed you what the final work should aspire to be like.
Basically: Keep practicing until it looks like this. |
Ending on material selection and restoration, I felt that much
of the important parts of carving, such as techniques, planning, and more
importantly, mistake covering up, were eschewed for historical analysis of
famous works, which was funny given the emphasis on apprenticeship over art
school at the beginning.
Of course, that didn’t stop the grand tradition of participating
whenever an arts and crafts book comes out of the random book machine. A quick
trip to Home Depot resulted in a small plank of wood and a box cutter as buying
a hundred dollar set of wood carving tools I would only use once was only a slightly
worst idea than cutting down a random tree in the middle of the city for
carving material. The result was less than satisfactory.
Yep, that's wood alright. |
Even in high school I knew that woodwork was not for me,
placing far below cooking, metalwork, and sewing. With that in mind, I went for
an easy design – the Biblio-Mat. After all, rectangles meant easier straight
cuts, which were simple enough, until the $2.50 nature of the wood reared its
head and started splintering. Now I understand the desire for endangered exotic
hardwood as the splintery texture of homegrown pine sucks for the delicate art
of box cutter carving.
Two hours not very well spent. |
I think I’ll stick to needlepoint.
Book rating: 5/10
(Interesting subject, bad follow through)
Random quote: “But
the beginner should not be too kind to his hands and too harsh to his pocket.”
(So true in almost every new hobby)