This article is about the history of wood carving. For techniques and other information, see wood carving.
A Chinese wooden Bodhisattva, Jin dynasty (1115–1234), Shanghai Museum.
Wood carving is one of the oldest arts of humankind. Wooden spears from the Middle Paleolithic, such as the Clacton Spear, show that people have engaged in utilitarian woodwork for millennia. Indeed the beginnings of the craft go so far back that, at least where timber is present, the use of wood exists as a universal in human culture as both a means to create or enhance technology and as a medium for artistry. The North American Indian carves his wooden fish-hook or his pipe stem just as the Polynesian works patterns on his paddle. The native of Guyana decorates his cavassa grater with a well-conceived scheme of incised scrolls, while the native of Loango Bay distorts his spoon with a design of figures standing up in full relief carrying a hammock. Wood carving is also present in architecture.
Figure-work seems to have been universal. To carve a figure/design in wood may be not only more difficult but also less satisfactory than sculpting with marble, owing to the tendency of wood to crack, to be damaged by insects, or to suffer from changes in the atmosphere. The texture of the material, too, often proves challenging to the expression of features, especially in the classic type of youthful face. On the other hand, magnificent examples exist of the more rugged features of age: the beetling brows, the furrows and lines neutralizing the defects of the grain of the wood. In ancient work the surface may not have been of such consequence, for figures as a rule being painted for protection and especially color.
It is not always realized at the present day to what extent color has even from the most ancient times been used to enhance the effect of wood-carving and sculpture. The modern colour prejudice against gold and other tints is perhaps because painted work has been vulgarized. The arrangement of a proper and harmonious scheme of colour is not the work of the house painter, but of the specially trained artist.
In the early 20th century, the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, on which much of this entry is based, commented, “Of late years carving has gone out of fashion. The work is necessarily slow and requires substantial skill, making the works expensive. Other and cheaper methods of decoration have driven carving from its former place. Machine work has much to answer for, and the endeavor to popularize the craft by means of the village class has not always achieved its own end. The gradual disappearance of the individual artist, elbowed out as he has been, by the contractor, is fatal to the continuance of an art which can never flourish when done at so much a yard.” This statement has proven untrue, as the continued survival of the art and craft of woodcarving can be demonstrated by the large number of woodcarvers who have carried on or advanced the tradition in different parts of the world.