Carving

For other uses, see Carving (disambiguation).

Székely wood carving

A carved Székely gate

Carving is the act of using tools to shape something from a material by scraping away portions of that material. The technique can be applied to any material that is solid enough to hold a form even when pieces have been removed from it, and yet soft enough for portions to be scraped away with available tools. Carving, as a means for making sculpture, is distinct from methods using soft and malleable materials like clay, fruit, and melted glass, which may be shaped into the desired forms while soft and then harden into that form. Carving tends to require much more work than methods using malleable materials.

Kinds of carving include:

• Bone carving
• Chip carving
• Fruit carving
• Gourd carving or gourd art
• Ice carving or ice sculpture
• Ivory carving
• Stone carving
  • Petroglyph
• Vegetable carving
  • Thaeng yuak (Banana stalk carving)
• Wood carving
• Hobo nickel

See also

• Whittling
• Sculpture