The employment of punched grounds in carved work is to be deprecated as mechanical in effect. Sufficient interest is obtainable by the process of cutting back, in the perfect levelling of which the carver need not be too concerned. Suspiciously uniform grounds are suggestive of work fret-sawed and applied.
No. 277. Wood Carving. English.
Late Elizabethan or Early Jacobean.
When carving in wood is in very high relief, it is occasionally, as in the Grinling Gibbons work, built up. This may not be a matter of great objection if properly attached, and the grain of fibre matched, but is, however, better avoided.
Reproduction Processes
Modelled ornament is generally employed in reproduction processes, such as moulding of Terra-cotta, plaster, etc. The design can be free in expression, or a unit of repetition according to requirement.
The detail which is applied to an existing surface is invariably more open, with a resulting display in the background.
The surface interest consists of contrasts in texture, the result of veining, striating and patterning forms. The relief is not, as in carved work, controlled by an original surface, but, being built up, is susceptible to greater variation. Mouldings may be broken by lapping and overlapping details, and though in some traditional work similar treatment occurs in wood-carving, it must be remembered that such details are too suggestive of, and more proper to, plastic renderings.
In economic moulded work undercutting of details should be avoided as this is only possible in piece or elastic moulds. In wood-carving, however, there is no restriction.