CARVING SIMPLE FIGURES OR ANIMAL FORMS—FIGURINI FOR CABINETS—SIMPLE ROUNDED EDGES AND APPROACH TO MODELLING.

When the pupil has had some practice in carving leaves and similar ornaments in relief, he soon learns to deepen or to cut them higher and higher, and then to model them into form. He may now, if he chooses, attempt some simple animal forms. A bird, a duck, or a hare hanging up, will present no special difficulty to him, firstly, if he will obtain one of Swiss work, already carved in wood, and imitate it. There are few towns where he cannot obtain something of the kind. It is true that much Swiss wood-carving is not at all to be recommended as regards style or finish, but it will do very well for a beginning. The best method would of course be to model a hare in clay after a dead one. In any case he can make a beginning by buying some toy animals, carved in wood and not painted. These are made by being sawn or turned out of wood into the profile section. This is then sliced into many pieces and each of these carved, sometimes fairly well, into an animal. The wool or hair is imitated in the very small gouges or V tools, and sometimes scraped with a rasp, comb, or other tool. After the blocking out such work presents no peculiar difficulty.

The process is quite as easy as regards the ordinary or grotesque animals in Gothic carving. Draw such an animal, Fig. 46 or 48 a or b, and having fairly bosted it out, proceed to very gradually round away the edges. If it be, for instance, a serpent, which is everywhere round, this process is very simple, especially if after the cutting we smooth it with files and glass-paper. It will shape itself. Now the limbs of animals, and even of human beings in low relief, may be rounded in this manner to approximate correctness; or to correctness enough for initial ornamental processes. As the pupil proceeds, and improves in modelling and advances to copying—let us say excellent patterns of Renaissance and classic work—he will go far beyond such beginning. But there is in itself absolutely no reason why, if he only draws his outlines correctly, he should not begin by this simple Gothic work.

Whatever a pupil can draw from life or a block, that he can shadow; and whatever he can draw and shadow he can model (or vice versÂ); and whatever he can model, he can execute in wood; nor would the working it out in sheet brass or leather trouble him at all. This is the best way to work, so much the best that, under all circumstances, and in spite of all drawbacks, every wood-carver should strive with all his heart to learn to draw and model; for in so doing he will learn a great deal more than all three of these cuts put together, for he will most assuredly have acquired a faculty which will help him in anything which he may undertake.

Having learned to sketch out, bost, and round simple figures, I advise the pupil to execute a number of them, with or without leaves and ornaments. He may thus sketch and cut fishes, animals of all kinds, human figures in outline, until he feels a certain confidence and ease as regards their execution.

What the pupil must do, therefore, in this lesson, is to draw, bost out, and round easy animal forms. At this stage let him pay more attention to the few points which constitute general correctness in a sketch than to minor details. I refer to the general distances of the eyes, joints, outlines of legs and back in a horse, deer, hog, etc.

Simple figures may be executed in flat or ribbon-work, or in the lowest relief, as well as in any other work.

The Italian carvers, for cabinet making, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, made great use of figurini, Fig. 49, also the ornament on page 60. These were little statues, generally of human beings, from three to five inches in length. They were, in ordinary work, rather sketched out than elaborately carved, but the effect was good; sometimes a hundred of them would be worked into a single cabinet. These figurini were also very freely used in later Roman and Roman Byzantine stone and ivory work, generally as rows of saints or scriptural personages, every one filling a niche under a round arch. These latter were often as rudely and simply shaped as it is possible to conceive, yet, owing to their “making up” or disposition, as subordinate parts they were in good taste. Any carver with a little practice can produce them. Rows of figurini in niches were frequently used for borders, or to surround caskets.