nERAMIC STUDIO 
with great care avoiding those with coarse and open, or 
crooked grain. 
Starting with even so slight a knowledge of the material 
it would seem that it would require the exercise of but a small 
amount of common sense to avoid the misuses and abuses 
to M^hich it is so often stibjected, as often by the "professional" 
as the amateur, because the latter must, perforce, be simpler 
from his limitations, but the former is apt to be carried awaj' 
bj^ his technical skill. But SimpHcity and Directness must 
be the keynote in design and treatment for wood. This will 
prevent the use of designs that should only be built up in 
plastic clay, or for cast metal, or plaster, or chiseled from 
stone. Manj' carvers of great skill and reputation have 
committed these sitas against their material. There is a mania 
for high relief, but one has only to remember the fibrous 
structure of wood to realise how easily projections may be 
chipped and fractured. Of course the degree of relief may be 
varied somewhat with the grain — least in that which is soft or 
brittle and greatest in that which is hard and fine and close. 
But the beginner, at least, will find it safer and wiser to use 
large simple surfaces in comparatively^ low relief, and he will 
work a long time before he exhausts the possibilities for most 
beautiful and satisfying effects, even within these limitations. 
I could write a chapter on the laziness and stupidity of 
the everlasting copying and re-hashing of hackneyed designs 
and old styles of which so many carvers are guilty. Nature 
was not richer and more suggestive in the past than she is to- 
day; but we pass her by for "bumpy" and meaningless scrolls 
and to give the overworked acanthus leaf another twist. The 
oak and the grape are so adaptable that they are still, in spite 
of centuries of use, capable of new variations and treatments : 
but there is an immense field, almost untouched, of fine and 
vigorous plant growth that would lend itself most happily to 
the simplification wood carving would entail. Muskmelons, 
gourds, eggplant, big podded beans, Indian corn, sunflowers, 
great poppies, flame lilies, orange lilies, hops, fruit trees and 
the great fans and clustered nuts of the horse chestnvit are but 
a few that are full of inspiration and suggestion. 
I do not mean that the carver should not studj^ old styles, 
and especially treatment. That is most helpful if he uses his 
common sense and critical judgment, for not all are good, and 
not any are all good. Perhaps the beginner can learn most 
from old English oak carving, it is so direct and fundamental 
in its treatment of the material and shows in what simple 
terms a motif may be expressed and yet be perfectly satisfying. 
Illustrations of it may often be found in books on old 
furnitiu-e, and there are many fine examples in the first parts 
of " A History of English Fvn-nitru-e" that is now being issued 
by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York City, in twenty parts, at 
$2.50 a part. The first five treat of " The Age of Oak." 
Pugin's "Ornaments of the 15th and l6th Centuries" 
contains some beautiful designs for carved furniture in the 
Gothic style. 
The niunbers of The International Studio for March and 
December, 1897, contain finely illustrated articles on old 
Scandinavian wood carving that are wonderfully suggestive. 
Of text books, "Wood Carving," by George Jack, is the 
best I know. It is published in the Artistic Craft Series, by 
D. Appleton & Co., New York City. $1.25 
"A course in Japanese Wood Carving," by Chas. Holme, 
is interesting and helpful. John Lane, New York. $l.00 
