Design and Figure Carving

Buy this if you are a carver. Firmly convinced that "anyone who can peel a potato can carve," E. J. Tangerman has become the best-known instructor in whittling and wood carving, the inspiration for thousands of readers who have taken up this rewarding hobby. In this book, he provides a seemingly endless array of design ideas that can be used just as they are or adapted to the special needs of the wood carver. The book is graded from very simple exercises through classical and modern design to museum pieces and is arranged according to the tools used in creating the various effects. It ranges over the entire field of carving and associated decorative techniques: sawing, gouging, outlining, inlaying and marquetry, and so on. In-the-round carving is covered in especially great detail, with chapters on the human figure (complete with tables of ideal adult measurements), heads and faces, arms and legs, the body in action, caricature, folk carving, and naturalistic birds and animals. In each chapter, the author explains how to lay out a design or block out a figure; points out important features of style, proportion and design: and provides information on such matters as variations in design, woods, proper tools famous or otherwise noteworthy examples of wood objects, paint and other finishes. Best of all, he supplements his text with an amazing total of 1,298 photographs, drawings, plans and layouts, reproducing an incredible variety of patterns and ideas for surface decorations, mouldings, decorative borders and trimming, openwork panels, traceries, chair backs and other furniture, relief carving, and hundreds of other kinds of wood carving.