Carved furniture is any piece of furniture whose decoration has been cut directly into the wood with chisels and gouges, rather than applied as veneer, paint or metal mounts. Carving may be shallow and incised, raised in relief, pierced right through, or fully three-dimensional, as in carved figures, animal feet and cresting.
Carving has been the dominant form of furniture ornament for much of history. Tudor and Jacobean oak furniture was decorated with lunettes, strapwork, guilloche and arcading, and the late seventeenth century saw elaborately carved walnut chairs and, at the highest level, the work of Grinling Gibbons in limewood. In the eighteenth century, mahogany allowed crisp carving of acanthus leaves, shells, claw and ball feet and the Rococo scrolls of the Chippendale period, while Victorian makers revived historic styles with enthusiasm, and Black Forest carvers produced exuberant bears and foliage. Collectors judge carving by its depth, crispness and sense of movement, and by whether it is original to the piece, since plain furniture was sometimes carved later, especially in the nineteenth century. Later carving can often be detected by fresh colour in the recesses and ornament that cuts through the original surface.
