Carpel

“ Even the carpenter became inspired with a desire to make something ornamental of his own department, and has shaped and carved (literally carved) his timbers into graceful moldings. Then, again, in the roof of Sall Church, Norfolk, shown in Plate IV, you have a noble piece of carpentry which is as much the work of an artist as the carved figures and tracery which adorn it—indeed it is all just as truly carved work as those figures, being chopped out [227] of the solid oak with larger tools, ax and adze, so that one knows not which to admire most, carved angels or carved carpentry. ”

“ But do you realize that very few of our sculptors carve in marble the things they model in clay? The custom is, to let some carver, generally an Italian, do most if not all of the marble-carving, just as it’s the custom to have a bronze foundry cast our bronze statues. ”

“ There were four hundred fine-wood carvers, and four hundred fine-stone carvers, carving filigree ornaments, chains, and foliage of the most astonishing realism in these materials. Fancy, actual chains in granite, pendants from elephants' heads! Most of the skilled masons and joiners of India, I am told, have been collected here. The masons must be in thousands; they are wonderfully skilled in work at granite, their very lightness of hand seems to let them feel just the weight of iron needed to flake off the right amount from the granite blocks. ”

“ An moreover (which was a greater marvel to behold) the excellent carver and deviser of this worke had fashioned the dogs to stand up fiercely with their former feet, and their hinder feet on the ground ready to fight. Behinde the back of the goddesse was carved a stone in manner of a Caverne, environed with mosse, herbes, leaves, sprigs, green branches and bowes, growing in and about the same, insomuch that within the stone it glistered and shone marvellously, under the brim of the stone hanged apples and grapes carved finely, wherein Art envying Nature, shewed her great cunning. ”

“ An exact imitation of the ingenious carpentry is cut in the rock down to the smallest detail: the stiles of the panelling, the round unhewn timbers of the roof, the clamping and dovetailing of the beams, and the primitive tree-nails with which these are secured are shown with the greatest distinctness. The appearance of the whole, when intact, must have resembled a petrified village. These groups of tombs are among the most curious and striking remains of antiquity. ”

“ Carving in wood, in all countries where it has been practised, has ever preceded sculpture, or carving in stone. It is, therefore, an art of the highest antiquity; and, although the same with sculpture in some of its applications, yet it differs from it somewhat in the mode of execution, according with the nature of the material.
3. The art of carving is very extensive in its application, [154] being used in the decorative parts of architecture, both civil and naval, and likewise in ornamenting cabinet-ware, as well as in forming patterns for casting in metals, particularly in iron and brass. ”

“ Study Italian Gothic?—perhaps it would be as well: build with pointed arches?—there is no objection: use solid stone and well-burnt brick?— by all means: but—learn to carve or paint organic form ourselves! How can such a thing be asked? We are above all that. The carvers and painters are our servants—quite subordinate people. They ought to be glad if we leave room for them. ”

“ All the carving is most interesting and beautiful: the caps and corbels of the vaulting-shafts; the little heads at the angles of the arches, which are vivid sketches of every type of contemporary character; and the carvings in the tympana, above referred to, which are best in the seventh, eighth, and ninth bays (counting from the west end) , those on the north excelling in design and execution, while those on the south are more grotesque. ”

“ So, we made a niche for the metal bird in solid rock, a niche which was itself a kind of chapel, just big enough to take the spread wings of the metal bird. I looked at the six vents under the clay wings, and the wheels and staves from which essential elements were missing, and wondered if ever inventive man, in all his generations, had ever left so much to faith in God, and man's future?
We blocked the small "chapel" with a rectangle of stone, and cemented it tightly. I marked the Cross and date upon it in red paint, and blessed myself and my fellow priests before we left the crypt. ”

“ The stone floor, with its great slabs, was so grandly carved with the crests and heraldry of her family, that to walk over these was like climbing a mountain, or tramping across a ploughed field. Common folks had to be careful, lest they should stumble over the bosses and knobs of the carved tombs. ”

“ I made sketches of two or three of the bone carvings, for the purpose of showing the art of the people who constructed this monument, so that by comparison with that of other known peoples some knowledge may be obtained, or theory advanced, concerning the race or tribe to which they belonged and the epoch in which they lived. Fig. 251 shows an exquisite bone carving of a paroquet which belongs much farther south and not found in that locality in modern times. ”

“ Work done in this manner, provided the carver has skill and taste, is sure to show character and life, and to differ entirely from the mechanical conventionalisms we generally see in modern stone-carving. ”

“ And besides the consumption of wood for fires, no little amount is used for the construction of our houses or huts. Nearly every man has suddenly become a mason or a carpenter, and the hammer, the axe, and the trowel are being plied with the utmost vigor, if not with the highest skill. ”

“ In going to church they observe no gravity, nor mind their dress; but as soon as the Talb begins to bellow from the steeple, the carpenter throws down his axe, the shoemaker his awl, the tailor his shears, and away they all run like so many fellows at football ”

“ We point to some of the exquisitely completed work of the stone carvers of the Middle Ages, the little hidden pieces tucked away unseen in the great cathedrals, where the work is just as loving in its detail and completeness as it is upon the altar itself, and we say this is the efflorescence of the human spirit expressed in work. ”

“ It is the business of the carpenter to cut out and frame large pieces of timber, and then to join them together, or fit them to brick or stone walls, to constitute them the outlines or skeleton of buildings or parts of buildings. ”

“ I showed him also where the carving had sprung up before the point of my knife, making plain the ‘fact that the carving had been glued to the fabric.
“His lordship got that made by a local carpenter twenty-five years ago,” said I; “and yet he tries to sell it to me for antique carved oak. It strikes me that in Wardour Street he would find a congenial episcopate.” ”

“ It is true that there seems to have been at one time an itch for carving, for in certain regions every piece of stone that projected from the ground has been carved as it lay, without any attempt to remove it: perhaps, a beneficent influence was created with each serene carved face. ”

“ The carpenter sawing boards, the smith who beats out a horseshoe, the mason busy with trowel and mortar on sun-blistered scaffolds, hoarsely shouting “More bricks!” they in their way of life are honest. ”

“ One of the most beautiful examples of carving is an inner door-case in the east drawing-room, the arch over which has a richly moulded soffit, and carved heads in the spandrils; over the door, rich Corinthian pillars, flanked by sculptured figures of a king in armour and a queen, support a cornice surmounting a large sunken panel. ”

“ Never but in one case have I discovered any article of European manufacture interred with the dead in whose honor the mound was clearly erected. Upon opening a small earth-mound on the Georgia coast, a few miles below Savannah, I found a clay vessel, several flint arrow-heads, a hand-axe of stone, and a portion of an old-fashioned sword deposited with the decayed bones of the skeleton. ”

“ Inside the chapels are as usual overloaded with huge 106reredoses of heavily carved and gilt wood, but the original pulpit still survives, a most beautiful example of the finest late Gothic carving. It consists of four sides of an octagon, and stands on ribs which curve outwards from a central shaft. Round the bottom runs a band of foliage most marvellously undercut, above this are panels separated the one from the other by slender pinnacles, and the whole ends in a cornice even more delicately carved than is the base. ”

“ Of the two other examples we select from the misereres of Corbeil, the first represents the carpenter, or, as he was commonly called by our Anglo-Saxon and mediæval forefathers, the wright, which signifies simply the “maker.” The application of this higher and more general term—for the Almighty himself is called, in the Anglo-Saxon poetry, ealra gescefta wyrhta, the Maker, or Creator, of all things—shows how important an art that of the carpenter was considered in the middle ages. ”

“ The ancient manors and houses of our gentlemen are yet and for the most part of strong timber, in framing whereof our carpenters have been and are worthily preferred before those of like science among all other nations. Howbeit such as be lately builded are commonly either of brick or hard stone, or both, their rooms large and comely, and houses of office further distant from their lodgings. ”

“ The carving of the friezes is interesting, inasmuch as it is somewhat out of the common in detail, and its component parts were evidently carved in large numbers, and used as occasion required, for in many places where the length of a carved stone was too great for its intended position it was ruthlessly shortened to fit, and the carving was mutilated. ”

“ We stand on the banks beside fluted columns of snow-white marble, and see broken marble everywhere near. That man who ploughs on the southern ridge of the sand turns up marble bits at every step of his bullocks, and the girls behind him, who are planting, uncover stones from the temple at almost every stroke of their hoes. ”

“ It was, in its detached state, an arch wanting the keystone. A keystone, however, projected outwards from the occipital plate of the head; and, [Pg 250] as it had to form at once the bond of connection between the cerebral armature of the creature and its cuirass, and to complete the arch formed by the strengthening belt or rib of the latter, it curiously combined the principle of both the dovetail of the carpenter and the keystone of the mason. ”

“ In notable examples, where the axle is carved in stone, the identical features are conventionally reproduced. Some exhibit a depression or deep hole in the centre. This is the case in the remarkable example at the museum in New Haven, Conn., where the axle is carved on the top of a square altar, the corners of which exhibit symbols of the four elements, each accompanied by the numeral 4. The centre of the figure exhibits a carved ollin, in the middle of which a deep hole is situated. ”

“ The corner buttresses have pinnacles at their stages, and the space below the north window is filled with quatrefoiled panels, and lozenges, traceried, with plain shields in their centres. A remarkable peculiarity is observable,—the carved ornamentation of the Chapel was never finished, the pinnacles on one buttress are completed, the crockets on the other only roughed out, and the cusps of the panel work above the tomb inside, still display the pencil marks of the intention of the carver, which his chisel never gave form to. ”

“ In poor churches which possess no fine materials for decoration, one has often wondered at and admired the picturesque effects extracted from yards of muslin, gold tinsel, and box wreaths, artistically combined. Our house carpenter is the only representative we have of the vestiarius, and he is but a feeble descendant from the ancestors of his craft, who were expected to study and evolve the adornments of the building for its completion, the materials of decoration for special occasions, and lastly, the mechanical means for hanging and stretching the draperies. ”

“ As much carpentry as a traveller is likely to want can be effected by means of a small axe with a hammer-head, a very small single-handed adze, a mortise-chisel, a strong gouge, a couple of medium-sized gimlets, a few awls, a small Turkey-hone, and a whetstone. ”

“ In or below this clay which covered the paved floor were found the following relics of human occupation—an iron ring, and an object in iron which looked like the shoe of a wooden spade, some staves of a small wooden cog, a wooden 287comb, some fragments of pottery of coarse workmanship, a portion of a quern or handmill for grinding grain, fragments of deer’s horns, and bones of the sheep and common domestic fowls. At one corner of the inner end of the chamber the ashes of a fire remained, and immediately above them there was a well-built smoke-hole. ”

“ A country carpenter deals in every sort of work that is made of wood: a country smith in every sort of work that is made of iron. The former is not only a carpenter, but a joiner, a cabinet-maker, and even a carver in wood, as well as a plow-wright, a wheelwright, a cart and wagon maker. ”

“ The choir stalls, rood-screens, roofs, retables, of England, France and the Teutonic countries of Europe, have in execution, balance and proportion, never at any time been approached. In small designs, in detail, in minuteness, in mechanical accuracy, the carver of this time has had his rivals, but for greatness of architectural conception, for a just appreciation of decorative treatment, the designer of the 15th century stands alone. ”