The carver's art

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2004 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Stabbing down, wasting away, and undercutting are just a few of the techniques, and veiners, macaronis, fluteronis, skew chisels, and fishtail gouges are some of the tools that enable a wood carver to coax exquisite figures, flora, fauna, and ornamental motifs out of a simple block of wood. Like stone, wood is an unforgiving material that demands a carver with a sure sense of design, an unerring eye for infinitesimal detail, and the patience of Job. A sculptor needs only about a handful of different chisels to successfully chip away at a block of stone, whereas a wood carver needs about one hundred gouges. This is because a carver must slice through the wood (sometimes against the grain), leaving a mark that is identical to the shape of the tool used. When at work, wood carvers are almost always ambidextrous, and they usually work from the same side of the bench.

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Creating carved embellishments for decorative arts objects, particularly furniture and frames, was a highly regarded skill in earlier times, and it still is today, because it is beyond the reach of any machine. Because carvers work from drawings they must be able to visualize a two-dimensional pattern in three dimensions. In many instances they must adapt their carving for gilding. This means adding depth to each cut so that after the application of gesso, bole, and gold leaf the carved elements still have crisp definition. As any gilder will tell you, their success depends entirely on the carver's work.

Mastering carving skills is a lengthy process achieved through practice and more practice. And, like all crafts that depend solely on the human hand, even a master carver needs lots of time to do the job. Thus carvings are expensive, which is one reason the craft no longer flourishes as it certainly did in earlier times. Happily one firm, Julius Lowy Frame and Restoring Company in New York City, and one master carver, Allan S. Webb, are entirely dedicated to keeping the craft not only alive, but thriving. At the age of sixteen Webb began his four-year apprenticeship in the well-known frame shop of Arnold Wiggins and Sons in London. In 1987 he worked with Paul Levi, and at Levi's retirement he founded his own carving and gilding shop, only to be lured back to Wiggins three years later as the head carver. In 1998 he moved to New York City, where he became the head carver for the Lowy firm, a highly regarded framing concern that has been in business since 1907. There Webb specializes in restoring examples from the firm's inventory of some four thousand period frames dating from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries. He undertakes the resizing of antique frames, which often requires fashioning new carved elements that are indistinguishable from the older ones, and he reproduces period frames for private collectors, art dealers, and museums. Among the latter, Lowy's clients have included the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Webb uses his own, mostly antique, gouges, which now number about two hundred. Most are English, and many are marked by some of Sheffield's most prolific makers of steel tools. Eighteenth-century tools are very hard to come by, presumably because over the years they have been sharpened into oblivion, so most of Webb's gouges date to the nineteenth century. Their wood handles have a rich patina from more than a century of use. Tools are of paramount importance to carvers, which is why Webb asserts that his gouges are the first things he would lunge for if the building caught fire.

Julius Lowy Frame and Restoring Company may be contacted by telephone at 212-861-8585 or through their excellent Web site (www.lowyonline.com), where one can see photographs of craftsmen at work.

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