B2—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, October 24,1981
Lititz carver Joseph Jordan's versatility in
wood creations includes this detailed
local artists
profit
BY JOYCE BUPP
Staff Correspondent
Frozen in mid-flight, a ringneck
pheasant glows with shimmering
color. Bright-eyed mallard ducks
and majestic snowy whistling
swans sit poised but alert, while
songbirds keep watch from slender
branch perches.
But these birds will neither
streak away in flight, nor break out
in song.
They are wooden. Each detail,
each ridged feather, set of wing,
slender foot has been lovingly
crafted with knife and gouge into a
masterpiece.
While birdlife and waterfowl
creations reigned supreme at the
recent seventh annual show of the
Yorkarvers, other beautifully
Carving from pieces of rare American Chestnut from the
Chesapeake region, Howard Strott of Baltimore, creates
representations of the bird and waterfowl of the Maryland
bay.
homestead
wies
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reproduction of the famous Clydesdales
pulling the Budweiser wagon.
find beauty,
in coving
crafted wood sculpting also filled
the host York College’s WoK
Gymnasium.
Yorkarvers is’ a York-based
organization of hobby wood car
vers. Among the over 60 exhibitors
at the show were a few
professional, full-time wood ar
tists, but the bulk of the creations
for show and sale were by
amateurs.
Ken Murray, cochairman of the
show with his wife Etta, was one of
the founders of the carving support
group. Wanting a wood Viking
ornament for their home interior
theme several years ago, Murray
finally resorted to experimentally
carving away at a piece of red
cedar he’d gotten from a friend. He
found the craft relaxing, rewar-
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ding, and addictive, after
discovering a buried talent.
After moving to York from
Illinois for the Caterpillar firm,
Murray ran an ad in the national
carving hobby magazine, “Chip
Chats,” to investigate any interest
in forming a group in the south
central Pennsylvania area.
“Our purpose was to share ideas
and meet with other carvers, and
to benefit from each other’s- ex
periences,” says Murray.
From an initial dozen wood
sculpters who formed the core
group, Yorkarvers today boasts a
membership of over 125. Their
major event of the year is the
annual exhibit, which has doubled
in size since its inception.
Besides being a talent showcase
and sale, the exhibit features both
novice and advanced competition
for figure and decoy carving, an
impromptu whittling contest, and
demonstrations on carving
techniques.
According to Murray, wood
carving exhibits in Pennsylvania
are fairly scarce. Lititz runs one
each Spring, while another is
hosted at Willow Grove. And
Salisbury, on the bird and
waterfowl-rich Eastern Shore of
Maryland, holds what the carvel's
call the largest decoy and bird
exhibit in the East.
While tools are relatively simple,
good quality ones can be ex
pensive, and sometimes hard to
find. Murray says a fine-quality.
German-trained Eleanor Bruegel is one of a handful of
women professional carvers. Although her favorite work is in
figure carving, customer demand seems unlimited for her
captivating, lifelike small animals.
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jrray, a junder and charter member of the
Yorkarvers, applies gouge and mallet to a large log during an
exhibit demonstration. Murray says the hobby is relatively
inexpensive, but there always seems to be just one more tool
a carving hobbyist wants to add to his assortment.
sharp knife is the backbone of the
carver’s tools, used up to half the
time. Gouges, styled with sharp,
curved cutting ends, are another
major tool, plus the mallets used to
hit them for cutting grooves in the
design.
Handling such fine quality tools
is but a sideline for wood artist
Eleanor Breugel, one of the few
women practicing carving as a
profession. Bubbly and outgoing,
Eleanor recalled her childhood
dream of carving, amidst frequent
interruptions from customers
enthralled with her table brim
ming with whimsical, oil-tinted
animals.
“Saturdays, my grandfather
used to give me his pocketknife to
use,” she smiles in remembrance,
while waiting on a customer for
her Austrian-made carving tools.
“I just always wanted to be a
carver.”,
A fine arts graduate of New
York’s University, Eleanor
worked for a year as a librarian at
Bryn Mawr, while pondering what
she really wanted to do with her
life.
“Then I took off for Germany for
a year,” she says. “And stayed for
seven.”
Once in Germany, she managed
to obtain an apprentice position
with the Langwood carving firm in
Oberammergau, -a town located in
the heart of the-Bavarian wood
carving area, and known around
the world for its production of the
Passion Play every ten years.
She was the last apprentice
taken under the tutorship of the
family-based firm, which dates
back to 1775.
Tracing the history of the car
ving craft back to the 16th century,
or perhaps even earlier, Eleanor
explained that the art had been
introduced to the Bavarian state’s
rural mountain areas- by
Benedictine monks. The mainstay
industry was farming, making hay
from a few rugged mountain acres
for the family’s handful of cows,
and cutting wood over the snowy
winter months. Carving fitted into
this way of life, becoming a
“cottage industry,” and a way to
earn a bit of extra income during
the snow-bound season.
The Lang firm, where Eleanor
studied, began as one of the
“publishers,” or dealers, who
purchased the mountain-crafted
wood carvings, in turn selling them
throughout Europe. Toys were a
popular item, as well as an article
known as a watch holder, often
intricately carved.
“The father of the family usually
owned a watch, and it was hung on
the special decorative stand, often
serving as the family’s lone
clock,” she says.
After marriage into a German
family, Eleanor related how she
lived in part of a very large old
farm home. She laughs when
remembering that, to get from her
rooms to other.narts of the home, it
was necessary to pass through the
barn, with its four cows and hay
storage area, built right into the
house.
Returning to the states after the
death of her husband, Eleanor
went into the wood carving
profession for herself, opening a
shop at her home in Broomall,
teaching carving classes, and
exhibiting at shows like that of the
Yorkarvers.
Works of two Lancaster Conn
tians, Joseph Jordan of Lititz, and
William Porterfield, Holtwood,
(Turn to Pace B 4)