Wood carving facts for kids
Wood carving is a cool art form where people use special tools to shape wood. Think of it like drawing or sculpting, but with wood! You use tools like a chisel or a knife to cut away pieces of wood. Sometimes, you might even tap the chisel with a wooden hammer called a mallet.
The goal is to create a wooden figure, like an animal or a person. You can also add fancy designs to wooden objects, like furniture or doors. When someone talks about a "wood carving," they might mean the art of doing it, or the finished wooden artwork itself.
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A Look Back: History of Wood Carving
People have been carving wood for a very long time! It's one of the oldest forms of sculpture. However, wood doesn't last as long as materials like stone or metal. It can rot, get eaten by bugs, or burn in a fire. This means we don't have as many old wood carvings as we do stone or metal ones. For example, we don't know much about how totem poles (tall carved poles) first started because old ones usually don't survive outdoors.
Where Wood Carving is Popular
Wood carving has been super important in many cultures around the world.
- In China and Japan, some of the most famous sculptures are made of wood.
- Most African sculptures are also carved from wood.
- The same goes for art from Oceania (islands in the Pacific Ocean) and other regions.
Wood is a great material for carving because it's light. This makes it perfect for things like masks that people wear or carry. It's also easier to carve tiny details into wood compared to stone.
European Wood Carving
Some of the best early European wood carvings come from the Middle Ages. You can find amazing examples from Germany, Russia, Italy, and France. During this time, many carvings showed Christian icons (religious images).
In England, many complete wood carvings from the 16th and 17th centuries still exist. Oak wood was often used back then. For really detailed and beautiful carvings, artists often use fruitwood, which comes from fruit trees, because it's easy to work with. A very famous woodcarver named Grinling Gibbons loved to use lime wood. Sometimes, if a carving is very complex, artists will carve it in separate pieces and then glue them together.
Cool Examples of Wood Carvings
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A wooden Bodhisattva from the Song Dynasty (960–1279)
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Tilman Riemenschneider's Saint Barbara from Germany
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Yombe-sculpture, 19th century
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The carving on the Urnes stave church is an example of the Urnes style, Norway
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A dragon's head from the Oseberg ship
Related pages
Images for kids
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Woodcarver at work
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Finely carved wooden door in the Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia
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Wood carving with a chainsaw
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Mambila figure, Nigeria
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Carved tree with reliefs of dinosaur and other animals, Laos
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A selection of woodcarving hand tools: 3 fishtail gouges, a v-parting tool, 4 straight gouges, 3 spoon gouges, and a carvers mallet
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Carving knives
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Carving knife used to round a corner of a piece of wood
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V-Tool used to part lines and cut V-shaped channels
See also
In Spanish: Talla de madera para niños
