Awe for the gods inspired the great sculptors of ancient Greece, and piety the medieval worker in stone. In America in early times, sheer practicality—with a strong clash of patriotism and moments of rough humor—brought forth as our first sculptural artist the humble carver. No one who loves folk art can fail to respond to this pleasant heritage, or to what little of it has come clown to us after escaping the ravages of weather, fire, and that other destructive force called Progress.

Wood carving was largely an alfresco medium, and so we have assembled it here, as a kind of Christmas pageant, taking no greater liberties than did the makers of these pieces themselves. If the placements are odd, and prospects odder, they merely illustrate the richness and variety of the medium. The assemblage at left, which was certainly never seen before in town or countryside, combines a pasture gate and a barber pole with two architectural figures, each piece a flamboyant variation on a patriotic theme. On later pages still stranger congregations gather for our photographers. Wood available in great plenty urged the American folk carver to creative invention. It was as ready to hand to the whittler who was idly sitting by the kitchen stove as to the figurehead carver and his apprentice working in seaport towns. Wood’s three dimensions inspired those who worked in it to greater diversity of expression than the two dimensions allowed the provincial painter, and its sculptors were as motley a lot as the variety of their works. The amateur who experimented witli clear-grained planks or with logs stripped of bark was an innovator playing with an idea. Daytime farmers and storekeepers were nighttime carvers, dreaming of wildfowl on an eastern flyway or thinking of a spring wind to set small figures to turning and their bladed arms a-whirling. Professionals instructed in shop practice were more regimented than the amateurs, and their figures, trade signs, architectural ornaments, and figureheads took form from line drawings or paper patterns.

Almost certainly the earliest art expressions in the English colonies were carvings of two kinds: one that the colonists brought with them, the other inspired by the natives of this country. The Old World provided the design and form for gravestones, while the New World provided inspiration and pattern for decoys to bring ducks and geese out of the sky. Here the two worlds came together in an interesting combination: stones to commemorate the dead and lures to attract the wildfowl that sustained life. Almost as early as these first colonial art works were figureheads for sailing ships. The execution was ornamental, but the intention was practical: to provide a triangular supportive structure at the ship’s prow, beneath the bowsprit. Most folk carvings—like ships’ figureheads—were useful objects. But aside from their practical function, they represented something else: the American compulsion to enrich, to embellish, to decorate.

While the carvers’ vocations, skills, talents, and training