CNC Machine

CNC is an anagram for "[real] Carving Necessitates [carving] Chisels"
(Carving Necessitates Chisels)

In the last post, the roof and one leg of the chest had just been finished. That was more than four months ago. Wow, the time really flies! Even though nothing else has been posted, I have not been sitting idle on my medieval projects.

I finished up the legs around the end of January, but then went out of town to do a job, anyway, they did not seem significant enough to warrant their own post. When I returned, I sawed up some panels (by hand) to for the sides and then started carving here and there as time and work permitted. They will eventually be fit into grooves in the the posts, but I decided to do the carving before doing the mortises on the panels, so that I would not accidentally break off the shoulders whilst carving.

7th century box lid and corner posts

7th Century box, the carving is underway. In the background one can see a
print-out of a Langobard panel, in the Church of Santa Maria, Civita
 Castellana, in Italy which I based my panel on.

7th century box, completed front panel
this depicts a wild boar hunt

7th Century box, Front panel detail. I love the way the frantic activity
of the dogs have been portrayed, albeit in a rather impressionistic way.

In the original Lombard panel, there was one additional standing figure and the trees extended further to the right, over his head. The scene was nearly perfect for the format of my box, but if I had made it exact, that figure would have been cut in half. The solution was to space everything just a bit wider, eliminate the forth figure and then shorten the branches of the tree so they fit within the space. This still left an unsatisfactory void to the right of the last figure. Taking a clue from the original artist, who had too much space below the spear-man, and thus left that area uncarved, I did not carve the right-hand edge straight in order to not have too much blank field beside that figure.

Red line showing what would be a straight edge to the field

In carving this panel, I realised that there is a lot more detail than one notices at a glance. I also realised, that even though it looks "simple" it is technically nearly as complicated as any "classical" carving. There are many subtleties which are not readily obvious, but where details are important to the scene, they have been rendered with care, such as the horses' bridals and trappings. Another factor which greatly increases the complexity of the process is the depth to which the background is sunk. If this were shallow, it would be fairly easy and take much less time, but the ground is sunk, in the scale of my work, at about 7 to 9mm. It is not easy to remove and clean out corners and small places at that depth but this was a very common characteristic of early medieval relief sculpture so I followed it.

I considered posting about this panel once I had finished it, but decided that I could get the next one done fairly quickly. "After all", I thought, it was "just circles and flowers, mostly" (I never learn) which should be fairly easy to carve, right? It took me a lot more time, again in large part due to the depth of the grounding. This panel is patterned after a panel which is, or was, in Berlin, but came from Rome, originally. I have no idea if it survived the war because I can find no modern mention of it, the original of what I used (found on an internet archive site) was taken "before 1920".

7th Century box, back panel nearing completion. I draw the simpler elements
directly on the wood, but the birds, which are more complex, I drew on paper
and then pasted that to the timber.

The original from which I based my panel on (It is marble)

7th Century box, back panel. I chose this design for two reasons, number one,
I liked it, and number two, because it worked perfectly in the space that I had
to work with. I believe this was a large factor in determining a lot of original
medieval decoration, not so much in the supposed meaning that modern
art historians and analysers want to attach to them. 

It is true that some symbols and patterns had special or significant meaning, but artist have always worked with and influenced decorative trends. It is no accident that much art of the 6th through 10th century utilised interlacing straps and bands, because this was one of the stylistic trends of the times, but like most other elements of design, sooner or later,  even long-winded popular elements fall out of fashion and are discarded. I came across several early medieval panels, with designs similar to my box design, which had been re-purposed in the 16th and 17th century. Apparently the busyness of the grooved strap-work was offensive to 17th century taste, however, and the panels were ground flat enough to remove all or most of the grooves.

Detail of a defaced 8th century marble panel incorporated into a
17th century altar in Chur Cathedral, Switzerland
I chose this part because it most clearly shows that it formerly
had the two grooves dividing the strap into three lines.
Sadly much of the detail of other elements, not so easily imagined,
were also forever obliterated - all in the name of contemporary taste.

Because I believe there is no particularly significant or special meaning to the design of this panel, (It is ornament, for ornament's sake), I felt no reason to rigidly adhere to it. (Besides, I hate blind copying of anything) I did notice, however that there seemed to be some thought given to the layout of the original design, and possible evidence of a "screw-up" along the way. In the bottom row, the same basic bird is repeated, in the same position each time, but every one of them has its own details which sets him apart as unique from his neighbours. In the middle row, there is a deliberate act of alternation one fruit and one rosette, throughout that grouping. Each flower and fruit is again rendered unique to itself. The first has 8 pointed petals, the second 7 with alternating pointed and round, and the third has all rounded tips, again with 8 petals. Two more rosettes in the top row are also individual.

The top row is where some seeming randomness and lack of reason is found. It begins with a bird on the left and ends with a bird on the right. I believe that the artist was like me, and was a bit dyslexic and confused by odd and even numbered repeats. If one has an odd number of objects in a row, the first and last can be the same, but if there are an even number of repeats, then what is on one end, cannot be on the other, leaving a bit of asymmetry to the overall design. (I have made this mistake myself in trying to lay out patterns) It is my belief that the artist wanted to have a bird on either end of the design but was also intending to alternate bird and flower. He began by carving from the left side, at the bottom, following his plan, as he progressed, however, he made adjustments to it. I deduct this from the fact that the first two "fig leaves" in the bottom row, and the first one in the top row are simpler than the others. As he worked on the design, he realised that his scale was large enough to give the leaves more detail, and so he began doing so. When he got to the top row, for some reason, he skipped to the far end, and again carved a bird, forgetting that a rosette should finish up the row begun with a bird. Once the mistake was begun, there was no way of correcting it.

Since I am speculating and hypothesising, and there is no way to "prove" or disprove my theory, I will go one step further and point out the second from the left element, which is not a "rosette" as I have named the others. One would say that it is a "Cross" and so it may be, but it may also fall into the general "flower" designs, and was used because the artist could not think of any other variation on the rosette than what he had already used.

It is interesting, however, to see that both the "flower" element and the "cross" element go way back in history. I have found evidence for both of these motifs in Assyrian art from at least 2000 BC. It seems, according to what I have read, that the cross within a circle represented the rays of the sun as obscured by the moon in an eclipse. As time went on and artists did what artist do best, the design was modified to include circles or dots within the void created by the quadrants of the crossed arms, and then the dots gave way to swirls in Celtic art. I have seen many variations on this theme from Celtic, Assyrian, Dacian, Scythian, Etruscan and Greek art, all long before the adoption of this symbol as the central motif of the Christian religion.

Two Greek Vases, one showing Celtic influence in the cross ornament, the
inside of two Etruscan cups, and a Celtic metal ornament, all showing this
as a form of decoration from several hundred years BC

Cross-shaped ornament

Since by the early Middle Ages, this cross motif had been adopted by Christianity, this was an appropriate element to incorporate within a panel intended for a church, but was in no wise intended for anything other than decorative elements within the broader field of ornamental work. It was simply part of the contemporary artists repertoire.

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