Husband’s Samples Used For Carving

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30976, 4 February 1966, Page 2

Husband’s Samples Used For Carving

A husband’s profession is not often the inspiration for his wife’s hobby, but Mr and Mrs R. R. Burdett Green of California have found an ideal way of combining work and pleasure.

When her husband brings wood samples home to study and work with, Mrs Green often claims a suitably sized piece to carve.

Mr Green graduated from Missouri University in forestry, gaining his masterate from Yale Forestry School, and has been working in woods with furniture manufacturers and architects, lecturing and preparing books, ever since.

Wood carving as a hobby was Mr Green’s idea. “I wanted her to have an extra interest,” Mr Green said yesterday. “But Mrs Green said you have babies, but hobbies you have to think up. so we thought up this.” “My husband had a lot of wood around the house, and when he bought some tools from a wood carver’s widow 1 got interested,” said Mrs Green.

After making a few Christmas presents which “were not so good” she decided to take lessons. Since moving from Chicago to California she has begun classes in clay modelling as well as carving.

“But I am not much good with clay, it seems to be so much easier to take down than build up,” she said. While most wood carvers liked a really hard wood because it made a clean cut, Mrs Green preferred a

medium hardwood which was not so tiring to carve. Things for House “I carve whenever I have spare time, but I am an amateur and do it just for enjoyment,” she said. "Mostly I make things I need for the house, and for presents.” Lamp bases are one of her favourite subjects, and recently she and her husband collaborated to make a table. Trivot tables are given an added touch of distinction with a design of dried seed pods and coloured leaves pressed with resin and attached to the table top. Mrs

Green collects the material from the forests around their home in Los Gatos. The Green’s interest in arts and crafts, and skill with their hands is shared by their daughter who makes enamelled jewellery and “is just starting on oil painting.” Mr Green knew most of the New Zealand woods through membership in the International Wood Collectors Society, but both he and his wife have been most interested in seeing the trees growing. Yesterday afternoon they planned a long walk through the Botanic Gardens.