What materials are antique carvings made from?

Wood dominates, with oak the most common named timber, then hardwood, walnut and the soft pale limewood used for Alpine figure carving. Stone is the other half of the category: marble and alabaster lead, with soapstone, serpentine, jade and limestone behind them. Small Japanese work here is boxwood, bone, antler or wood rather than ivory.

How old are most of these carvings?

Dealer-entered dates run from 1700 to 1950 on the listings that carry a clean year, and the largest single bucket is the 19th century. The decade buckets show a real late-Victorian to inter-war body of work, with the 1920s, 1930s, 1890s, 1910s and 1880s all well represented. Earlier pieces are a minority, though 18th-, 17th- and 16th-century carvings appear, and a handful of listings reach back further still.

Are antique carvings mostly English?

No. Nationality words in titles are led by Chinese and then Italian, so the two largest identifiable origins in this archive are Chinese work and Florentine alabaster. English carving is named only occasionally. Much of the European religious and architectural material is Continental and catalogued without a nationality at all.

Which subjects come up again and again?

Figures and busts first, then animals. Lions appear in 31 titles, bears in 27 and dogs in 21. Bears are almost a category in themselves, running from Japanese kibori kuma from Hokkaido to Black Forest examples made as double stick stands, and one lot is a set of fifteen miniature bears.

How large do antique carvings get?

Scale swings widely. The same archive carries netsuke a few centimetres across and life-size figures, some standing on their own columns. At the top end there are pieces measured at 93cm and 169cm, a marble bust on its pedestal, a 99cm pair of Kashmiri lacquered elephants and a Tibetan temple lion weighing 25kg.

Do carvings usually carry a maker's name?

Rarely. Only 44 titles say signed, and the anonymous oak and limewood religious figures are catalogued without a workshop or school attached. Just one name clears three dealers across the whole archive: Pugi, on Florentine alabaster and marble figures of women. About 109 carvings are listed on Sellingantiques in a year, and 195 different dealers have handled one, so no single specialist defines the field.

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Antique Carvings

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Hand-carved sculpture in wood and stone, sold as free-standing figures, busts, animal studies, panels and architectural fragments, made for churches, houses, souvenir trades and scholars' desks.