Wood carvers in England, c. 1660-1880.

In recent years several scholars have done much to bring understanding to the complex interrelated activities of the architects and craftsmen who built so many of the great English and Scottish houses. (1) Whilst fully documented accounts devoted to one house are rare, (2) there is a full awareness that a widespread fever of building gripped the landed class from medieval times onward, and many details have been published about the roles played by various craftsmen in these endeavors, sometimes in association with one or two architects, sometimes ranging across work for many masters. (3) Among these craftsmen are the several talented carvers whose work is summarized in this article. Information about their activities is still incomplete, however, for their work is mostly unsigned and documentation is often limited to mentions in other records of a commission. Moreover, there can be a problem with dating, in that a carving could be executed in a workshop and installed in a house many years after the main construction was completed. In addition, it is important to recognize the influence on carvers' work of foreign engraved sources; (4) the infiltration of talented craftsmen from else-where in Europe, particularly painters, silversmiths, and sculptors; (5) and the standards set, if not always attained, by those employed on the King's Works.

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The first to hold the title master sculptor and carver in wood to the crown was Henry Phillips (w. 1661-1693), who is mentioned in 1662 for sundry carved work in royal residences, particularly the Palace of Whitehall in London and Windsor Castle. As a prominent member of the Worshipful Company of Joiners (he became its upper warden in 1668), Phillips was competent, but somewhat old-fashioned in his style. At his death in 1693 the better-known Grinling Gibbons succeeded him in the royal post.

A great deal has been written about the Dutch-born Gibbons's accomplishments, (6) but much that he would have been ashamed of has been credited to his chisels, and those of his team of carvers. To understand these misattributions, it is important to understand the state of wood carving at the time. Most of it was carried out in oak, which Gibbons used in some of his work for the renowned architect Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. But limewood (also known as linden), which had been favored by carvers since Renaissance times in Germany, (7) was more familiar to Gibbons, and he used it from his earliest years in England. Among many innovations, Gibbons refined the placement of swags and festoons into a more exuberant whole, suspending representations of game birds from their feet so that "one wing, or both, can fall open, conveying the effect of gravity and creating a showy outline." (8) In his limewood carving (see Pl. III) "tender leaves seem ruffled by the wind," and grape clusters "seem to bleed without a touch," as his contemporary the (albeit somewhat ineffective) poet laureate Nahum Tate (1652-1715) wrote in 1684. (9) Gibbons's signature is as visible in the way a festoon swings or a tress hangs as it is in the details of carved vine tendrils, the precise nature of lace or feathers, the bloom of a ripe peach, or the exactly observed weight of a flower on its stem. These products of unparalleled virtuosity continue to delight and amaze us today.

But the death of William III (r. 1689-1702) meant the end of an era and a turning away from the taste for these smaller scale limewood carvings. In addition to considerable activity in providing funerary monuments (at least forty-five are known), Gibbons became more concerned as a contractor, with major commissions in stone, such as Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. He died in London on August 3, 1721, and was buried on August 10 at Saint Paul's, Covent Garden, the church in which he and his wife, Elizabeth (d. 1719), had worshipped and in which most of his eleven children had been baptized. (10)

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