Wood sculpture is three-dimensional art carved, assembled or constructed from timber, ranging from devotional figures and portrait busts to decorative panels, animals and abstract forms. Wood has been used for sculpture in almost every culture, valued for its warmth, availability and suitability for detailed carving.
In medieval and Renaissance Europe wood was the principal material for church sculpture, including polychrome saints, altarpieces, rood figures and choir stalls, and German limewood carvers such as Tilman Riemenschneider achieved extraordinary refinement. In England Grinling Gibbons carved remarkable naturalistic cascades of fruit, flowers and foliage in limewood for great houses and churches in the late seventeenth century. Folk carving, Black Forest bears and animals, ship figureheads, African and Oceanic sculpture and twentieth-century studio works by artists such as Barbara Hepworth broaden the field further. Collectors assess the quality of the carving, age, surface and any original paint or gilding. Splits, insect damage, losses and later repainting are common, and care should be taken over attribution, as old styles were widely copied. Wood sculpture brings texture and character to interiors and works especially well in panelled rooms.
