WOOD CARVING.
At Brienz we went through a very large factory and saw the patient Swiss chipping away tirelessly at the huge piece of wood that was soon to be a medallion portrait. It is an art that requires great skill and delicacy of touch to produce fine work. In this factory there were some four hundred or five hundred men employed, and the work they turned out was marvelously beautiful. In fact one cannot sufficiently admire the wood carving of the region. The patient workers do everything artistic in the material, and it is artistic. Landscapes, portraits, hunting scenes, animals, angels, scriptural subjects, everything that is done on canvas or in marble, is done in wood, and many of the pieces are purchased by crowned heads, and at a very high price.
THE HOME OF THE CARVER.