Ornate Wood Carving

Chris Adami-Sampson
Post 4 - 2025 : Opposite Upcycle Aesthetic, Student Work
6 Comments

I believe the closest opposite aesthetic for my upcycle project, using the same materials would probably be the aesthetic of Ornate Wood Carving. This type of woodworking bridges all different cultures and woods and has been around for thousands of years. It has only progressed to be more and more ornate as tools have improved and new methods have been created. The hallmarks of such an aesthetic are intricate designs carved into a wood panel, typically in the relief style where there is some decent amount of depth the the carving. Such pieces frequently feature leaves, flowers, animals, and repetitive patterns. In the featured image and Figure 1 you can see Thai ornate carvings featuring Lotus flowers, both of these pieces are so beautiful and must’ve taken hours and hours to complete, I feel like they should charge more for their work.

Figure 1: Thai Lotus Carved Wood Panel, Siam Sawadee

 

I could implement similar carving styles to the ‘headboard’ or ‘backboard’ of my Flute Holder, I don’t think that style would work for the actual holder elements themselves. For that I could employ another type of ornate carving called freestanding carving, this is like relief in its intricacy but you can view it from all angles. Figure 2 is closer to freestanding carvings but it would still be classified a relief by the definition, but I liked the style of the carving. To create the bird motifs in this aesthetic I could emulate a similar bird in a freestanding carving to hold the flute on either end.

Figure 2: Bird with Berries, OakApple Designs

This entirely opposite aesthetic of woodworking is not unattainable at all, it of course would require some practice and wouldn’t be nearly as good as these examples but it is do-able with the materials I started with. However the big reason I wouldn’t have chosen to go in this direction is the time commitment, creating a large ornate piece like this would probably take dozens to maybe over a hundred hours of hand carving, and in the timeframe of the project I just wouldn’t have been able to finish it in time. But it is very cool to envision what other paths I could have chosen to go down on this project.

References:

Featured Image: https://www.siamsawadee.com/product/dark-stained-wood-carved-panel/

Figure 1: https://www.siamsawadee.com/product/thai-traditional-lotus-carved-wood-wall-panel/

Figure 2: https://www.oakappledesigns.com/product/bird-pecking-grapes/

6 Comments. Leave new

  • Pisay Suzuki
    February 16, 2025 11:30 pm

    I really like working with wood! There are Japanese wood chisels that I are cool to work with if you ever get your hands on them. I can see why you wouldn’t want to go in this direction for this class due to the intricacies and time it would take to learn the technique.

    • Chris Adami-Sampson
      February 19, 2025 7:51 pm

      Me too its super fun to craft things out of wood, I have seen some Japanese chisels but the Idea Forge woodshop doesn’t have any Japanese ones.

  • David Whisnant
    February 16, 2025 6:06 pm

    I greatly enjoyed reading your post on your opposite aesthetic. I have always found ornate woodcarving to be fascinating as a craft. I can imagine that the level of craftsmanship shown in your pictures can take years to master and is a very time intensive process. Is there any way that modern technology could be implemented that would be able to produce the same level of workmanship? I am curious how a worker would lay out a pattern for the woodcarving and accurately control the depth of each individual cut to shape the carving to the desired form.

    • Chris Adami-Sampson
      February 19, 2025 7:54 pm

      Yes it really is impressive the amount of skill and time it must take to make such carvings. I think there definitely are some options for modern manufacturing methods to take a lot of the bulk work out, predominantly CNC routing is a huge possibility to get the major shapes carved. I do think there would need to be some hand carving to get the very specific details in, and especially with some of the more natural looking pieces the CNC may look too perfect in a way. In terms of controlling depth and marking I would say they probably start with a stencil or drawing then do slowly refine the shape working slowly, each feature is probably carved in many ‘layers.’

  • Bryan Moreno Najera
    February 14, 2025 11:53 am

    Without considering the infeasibility of carving something so intricate, your flute may blend in with this type of aesthetic. The flute would no longer be the centerpiece of your project. This could either be a good or bad thing. Great if you want an intricate piece of wood to be on your wall that also doubles as your flute mount/storage. All the natural forms you can carve into the wood can add to the lore and backstory of your flute. If you were to build your project using this aesthetic, maybe you could even do something in the middle, with simple ornate carvings like 2D shapes instead of the 3D carvings you showed. These 2D shapes may even be cut on a CNC milling machine or laser cut to make the fabrication simpler.

    • Chris Adami-Sampson
      February 19, 2025 7:55 pm

      Yeah thank you for the input Bryan! I do think some carved aspects in the project could definitely lend the project itself to be more of an art piece and less purely functional. But I do think you’re right about the ornate carvings maybe overpowering the flute and making it less of the centerpiece, that’s partly why I like the more simplistic design I’ve chosen to go with.

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Chris Adami-Sampson
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