OLD WOOD-CARVING.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 818, 16 May 1910, Page 6

OLD WOOD-CARVING.

ITS GENESIS AND EVOLUTION. A LECTURE AT NEWTOWN. . "Old Wood-Carving" was the subject of a lecture delivered at Newtown to his pupils recently, by Mr. W. Corbett, architect. In the course of his lecture Mr. Corbett pointed out that the earliest recorded time when there was any woodcarving was in the eleventh century, but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there. wore abundant evidences of what our forefathers were able to do and they found the highest proofs of man's handiwork in temples dedicated to God. The mass of carved work was executed in the fifteenth century and thero must then havo been immense forests of timber to permit of carving being produced. There were few cases in which English oak was used for wood-carving in the present day, 75 per cent, being American, Australian, and New Zealand wood. Dealing with carving found in England, and peculiar to Devon and Cornwall, the lecturer explained that the work was found in three-parts of tho furniture of the churches. From the earliest times, men, whether heathen or Christian, had given their best works to their Creator, and in tho old churches carving was lavished in screens, roofs, and seats. In Devon and Cornwall the churches had always had their rood-screens, which might lje traced from Jewish temples, and the earliest form was simply a beam on which were carved our Lord on the Cross, with His mother and favourite disciple on either side. In the fifteenth centnry our forefathers conceived tho idea of making these figures a more immediate subject for adoration, and so they constructed o floor on tho top of the screen, and this was approached by a little flight of stone steps cut in the north and south

After describing characteristic specimens of wood-enrving found in the old churches of Devon and.- Cornwall, and referring also to some of the humorous subjects chosen, tbe lecturer remarked that the Puritans had cast out of their churches anything of a decorative character. They had whitewashed and plastered walls and roofs, had taken away everything worth calling furniture Having dealt with wood-carvings in roofs and seats of old churches, and pointed out that there were no seats except those of stone in English churches until the fourteenth century, tho lecturer went on to point out that art was the embodiment of man's best ideas and aspiration. In the old days it was so closely allied to religion that they might almost Iμ called twin sisters, but their kinship was severed at (he time of tho Puritans, so much so that ecclesiastical art ceased to exist shortly after the Commonwealth. Domestic art lingered on until a hundred years ago, but had now ceased, and to-day we had only "Brummagem art." The time,of,the living art. Jioivcver, was woll on tho way, especially in London, and artists were picking up tho threads where tho old men laid them down, and they were working closely in touch with Nature. Where art was not in touch with Nature it could not succeed, and the reason for this was possibly that Nature was the art of the Ruler of tho Universe. As an. art it was allied with music, painting, and architecture, and these should be inspired by such things as the voices of the winds mid waves, the flowers, tho sunsets, and Hie majestic and terrible stornis. Ma-chine-made art must ever he disappointing, and all must hope that tho now day was drawing near.