40 | AMERICAN 
End of Library Table Carved for Dr. Felix Adler 
by Karl von Rydingsvard 
swift machine secures that; therefore the native workers in 
arts and crafts find it terribly difficult to get on. Their clients 
must be confined to the comparatively narrow circle of those 
who can appreciate the difference between objects having the 
personal stamp of the maker and those which are turned out 
in quantity. Unfortunately the circle has to be narrowed yet 
more by the exclusion of those who know but lack the purse. 
A pioneer in “legitimate’’ wood carving is Mr. Karl von 
Rydingsvard, a Swede, who has been a teacher of and lecturer 
on carving in New York for the past sixteen years. He passes 
his summers in Maine—appropriate place for workers in 
wood. At Brunswick, Me., he brings about him zealous 
pupils from families of the well-to-do and from those also 
who are breadwinners. Mistress and maid, rich and poor, 
engage in the delightful task of producing articles of fur- 
niture which are beautiful without losing their usefulness, 
chests of drawers, sconces, ornamented bookcases, tables for 
hunting lodge and summer cottage, deftly carved bellows for 
the wood fires that in Maine are apt to be comforts in June 
4 x 
Piieri a i SAY 
End of Library Table Carved for Dr. Felix Adler 
by Karl von Rydingsvard 
and necessities in September. And in winter his workshop 
in New York is the haunt of pupils old and young who are 
learning the craft for their support or only satisfying the 
HOMES 
AND | GAR DENS January, 1906 
longing to create objects with their own hands and brains 
which shall be different from anything to be found in the 
trade. 
There is something elvish in the adaptability of the ma- 
chine to every new demand. Carved objects can be turned 
out a dozen at a time, one dozen knives chipping away at 
as many blocks while the pointer of the guide moves over 
the model to be copied—certainly a marvel of economy of 
human labor! For when the machine stops, those twelve 
copies have merely to receive their finishing through the hand 
of a moderately expert carver. But there is no touch of the 
master in them, no impress of a personality, and none of the 
pleasure felt by the owner in a work which is unique. “It is 
an evil growing out of our republican institutions,” continues 
the remorseless imperialist Poe, “that here a man of large 
purse has usually a very little soul—which he keeps in it. The 
corruption of taste is a portion or pendant of the dollar 
manufacture. As we grow rich our ideas grow rusty.” 
Of a certainty we are less crude than the people of his day, 
or perhaps we are more independent of the passing fashion 
and have a greater variety of minds. Since that day William 
Morris started a crusade for better things and the opening 
of Japan introduced the marvels of Oriental craftsmanship. 
Top of Nursery Table, with Decorative Scenes from Robin 
Hood. Carved by Mrs. James H. Briggs, Jr. 
True to the land of his birth, Mr. von Rydingsvard tends 
toward the models of Gamal Norge, ancient Norway and 
Sweden, which do not exclude such exotic beasts and birds 
as the lion and the peacock, and fairly revel in eccentric sea 
monsters. Observe the armchair and writing table made 
for Dr. Felix Adler, with its carvings in low relief of troll 
and gnome, goblin and monster, beast and bird, its massive 
form and construction without nail or screw, after the fash- 
ion of the men who settled Iceland and Greenland. Observe 
also in the chest carved at the Institute of Arts and Sciences 
in Manchester how decorative are the coats-of-arms, helmets 
and foliage. Very Norse, again, in its design, is the armchair 
with interlacing design on the sides, recalling the illumina- 
tions of the gospels made by the Irish miniaturists from Iona 
and Lindisforne in the eighth and ninth centuries. The 
spirit of the Runic movements of Scandinavia and Ireland is 
seen in the long bench with dragons and sea monsters coiled 
singly or in pairs on the panels of the back, separated by 
squares with varied interlaced patterns. 
Wood carving is indeed an ancient craft which we find 
blooming on the Nile in the earliest ages—carving on chair 
and chariot, bedstead and spoon, boat and portrait statue. 
ve 
