Essay On Woodworking
For a very long time woodwork was considered fine art but in today's day and age it's become quite the opposite. Many portray it as craftsmanship and not fine art, what made us change over the years much? Thanks to the advances in tools and technology woodworking has grown into finer craftsmanship and could be considered fine art as seen throughout history.
Wood has been around for many centuries and serves many purposes such as creating oxygen and extracting its wood grain to build our society. Today we build buildings, furniture and ornamentals with the wood we have. We kept pursuing “Woodworkers have enabled overseas travel , created communities, improved personal safety, and built everything we needed to live and flourish.”(Rachel Brown) .Woodworkers and carpenters helped people turn from tribal society to a civilization built to expand outward as much as possible. The oldest way we see humans starting to develop using wood was by fasting spears for hunting and creating tools to benefit the crops and harvest. We knew what wood was capable of doing all the way back to the early ages. We would be stuck in the primitive ages ”It’s no stretch of the imagination to say that without the tool building , home building, and boat building skills of carpenters, we’d still be living in caves and hunting wild animals for food.”(Rachel Brown). Our journey of carpentry started without us even knowing it we would’ve thought of it as means to protect ourselves and or improve the existence around us. When we look back we will never know what the first wooden object was.
The oldest woodwork that was found was from the neanderthals, a 300,000 year old stick which is amazing since wood decomposes when exposed to oxygen, dampness, and fungi. But since the environment that secluded the stick was all mud and clay it was able to be preserved for so long. “Experts think these early wooden tools were used to hunt and forage for flint, tubers, or clams. Dating tests show the tools were most likely made with the sharp edge of a stone, the most obvious stone being flint. Some of the tools were even burnt first to make the scraping process easier and to harden the finished product.”(Rachel Brown). The sticks they found were mostly for defending themselves and uncovering things in the ground. This leads me into the most ancient fine art that was uncovered which was a 5 meter tall statue with symbols that seem to represent how they understood the natural and spiritual world.”Professor Mikhail Zhilin of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology believes this might be the case, saying, “This is a masterpiece, carrying gigantic emotional value and force. It is a unique sculpture, there is nothing else in the world like this… The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. People were passing on knowledge with the help of the Idol.”(Rachel Brown). This statue could’ve been how many stayed in harmony with the world around them in such a difficult time to survive with such harsh winters and natural world around them.
Woodworkers and carpenters were praised throughout history and religion. “Take for example the Old Testament of Christianity that tells us Noah built a wooden ark from cypress wood with direct instructions from God to make the dimensions 330 by 50 by 30 cubits. In the New Testament both Joseph and Jesus are carpenters by trade.”(Rachel Brown). Everyone respected woodworkers and carpenters back then because they had the skills to make tools, furniture,art and things to keep advancing society. “In the east, the writings of Lu Ban, a Chinese woodworker who lived from 507 to 444 BC, are held in great esteem and he was worshiped as the patron god of builders and contractors. Lu Ban introduced the plane and chalk line to ancient China and was said to be taught by a god. The Romans also have their love affair with wood preserved in text. Vitruvius ‘De Architectura’ contains a whole chapter on timber and its uses”.(Rachel Brown). In religious texts it's seen that the gods used woodwork and carpentry to influence people to create and expand their knowledge of woodwork and carpentry.
The way woodworkers built tools was completely different compared to today. They Used to use a lot of bones and antlers to shape wood and create tools, until flint became a much more stronger tool. “The ancient Egyptians used basic axes and chisels alongside bow drills and pull saws. The early use of copper for tool heads evolved into bronze as our understanding of metal deepened. In fact, the Egyptians used so much wood that the Nile Valley suffered severe deforestation and their wood needed to be imported.“(Rachel Brown). To this day we still use the same designs as our ancient ancestors did, Disregarding steel the tools look almost identical to what we have in modern day. We have really only advanced in the material that we use to carve wood.
Joinery is the ability to join two pieces of wood together without the use of nails or any type of wood glue. The most we have uncovered of joinery goes back thousands of years ago and possibly even longer, we have even preserved some of these intact joinery that can be seen today. “Ancient Egypt with its rich historical record has preserved examples of veneering, carving, and the use of animal glue. Examples of these advanced woodworking techniques were found in the burial tomb of Semekhet dating 5000 years old, and the first use of woodworking glue we know of was dated between 1570-1069 BC. Although we don’t know the formula of ancient Egypt’s ‘No More Nails’, its existence is recorded in texts.”(Rachel Brown). We know for a fact that we started using joinery before the 4th century BC and it was a product that was very valuable for trading because it was considered a fine piece of work. Many pieces of furniture have been found along many popular trading routes.
In today's modern day we see wood prices sky rocket because of deforestation. It's very expensive to keep up with the high demand. But thanks to the creation of plywood, chipboard and fiberboard we have been able to cheap the material. “Woodworkers who practice handmade techniques have a direct link to our ancestors all the way back to the first Neolithics that burned and scraped a pointed stick 300,000 years ago. The wooden link to our natural world is a part of human evolution. You might even argue that it moved us forward. Woodwork has provided us with not only a way to survive, but a way to advance and improve.”(Rachel Brown). Heavy machinery and cnc machines have allowed us as a civilization to create things very fast and precise, meaning buildings and furniture can be created in record time. You can most likely see a piece of furniture that was created by a machine every single day without ever realizing it.
Wood art is about expressing, adornment and great art that isn’t functional or purposeful. Woodart is nothing new and can be seen throughout history dating all the way back to the neanderthals. “But in recent years forms of art and artists working with mediums other than paint began to surface and be accepted as such. These were glass blowers, metal workers, ceramists, and porters. Woodworking did not remain an exception. And wood art came to be considered as such.”(Assemble and earn). Why was woodworking not included a long time ago if metal working and glassblowing were considered to be art? You can practically do the exact same thing with metal that you can do with wood excluding some techniques.
Taylor’s artwork is literal Artwork and she tries to portray emotional events. Her artwork is very impressive because the amount of time it takes just to create one piece takes 1-2 years to make. ““Originally, woodworking seemed very off-limits, because of the bias against craft in contemporary art,”Taylor says. Taylor builds her flat, figurative compositions and installations by cutting and fitting pieces of wood veneer together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.”(Ariela Gittlen). She uses plywood and starts to create her artwork by adding thin layers of veneer on it until she starts to form her vision of what she is trying to evoke.
Many craftsmen create from plans and past projects but when you start to change the product so it has a different aesthetic you are becoming an artist looking at different perspectives that would appeal to people and yourself. “I believe that art is defined as “Clarity of a communication,” how well does something ‘speak to you.’ If it does not, then it is not art; if it does speak to you it is. You may find that a song that is not art is seldom played by the listener and songs that do are.A particle-board side table and mass-produced, cheap furniture is hardly art. Creativeness plays a role, but communication to the beholder is the splitting difference. It’s communication is evidenced also by how many people talk to others about it, whether the opinion is good or bad; how widespread the communication is, how good the art is.”(Tom). When he compares music that's a really good point because, people find some artists very talented and make beautiful music but someone else can disagree and call them untalentlented and undeserving of the title.
In conclusion, I believe woodwork to be a fine art because many people can look at a piece of work and see the artistic vision the artist/craftsmen was trying to evoke. It truly comes down to if the person seeing it describes it as being a piece of artwork. So to conclude woodwork is both Art and Craftsmanship. In the Famous words of Saint Fransis of Assisi “He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”(goodreads).
