Inuit stone carving - a detective story

When I was much, much younger, long before I discovered carving, my father came into the room one day and gave me a stone sculpture of a person holding a sack. My great-aunt Mary had died and the small statue was passed on from her to me.

The Inuit figure had been brought back from Canada by my grandmother in about 1965. That was really all that was known about it. As I learnt more about carving generally, the sculpture interested and intrigued me more and more.

The weight and shape of the dark serpentine, veined with greenish tints and flecked with red, make it so pleasing to hold in one hand. It was clear that someone had worked the design around the shape of the original stone: the dents and depressions of that rock were still visible, albeit smoothed out. 

On the base was carved the number 1760. I knew that it wouldn't be a date mark but was it a catalogue number?

Who had carved this mysterious sculpture and where? For years I didn't know. Even a trip to the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa failed to turn up anything, with the resident expert being out on that day and subsequent email enquiries to him going unanswered. 

Reading books on the subject showed that the sculpture probably came from around the east coast of Hudson Bay but that was about it.

Then I learnt about disc numbers.

Disc numbers were used from 1941 to 1972 (or 1978 in Quebec) and were introduced to help various organisations (such as government agencies) to identify Inuit individuals. Before then people would have one name, given to them by elders. When missionaries arrived, many Inuit took Christian names but often altered them to make them sound more local: so Thomas might become Tumasi. 

After the Mounted Police census in the 1940s, identification numbers were assigned to each person and were often used as signatures by Inuit carvers in the 1950s and '60s. The numbers (preceded by an E for east or W for west) were also stamped onto discs which would be worn around the neck or sewn into a parka. This practice was phased out after surnames became officially adopted by Inuit in 1969. 

Image from: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/xd7ka4/the-little-known-history-of-how-the-canadian-government-made-inuit-wear-eskimo-tags

Using a site that traces Inuit artists by their disc numbers, I discovered that my carving had been made by Pauloosie (or Paulosie) Weetaluktuk. He was born in 1938, died in 2012 and lived at Inukjuak, a town on the east coast of Hudson Bay which was formerly known as Port Harrison. 

I haven't been able to find any photos of Pauloosie Weetaluktuk that show his face, but have found a presentation that he gave as a member of the 'local grocers' association' to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in June 1992. It gives interesting glimpses of his life as a carver in a place very different to that in which I live.

He talked through a translator as he didn't read or understand English. The main topic was the high cost of living in such a remote place (he said that it was three or four times higher than in more southerly parts of Canada) and how that makes it difficult to survive there. The increases in taxes and high living costs mean that carvings 'do not make much money' any more and it is tough selling skins and handicrafts as there is 'hardly any value in them'.

Pauloosie Weetaluktuk said that: 'Our operating budget has to be very high these days. There are people who have never been employed in their lives, who have depended on carving and they were able hunters, but now that the price of carving has gone down, you just see them as men but they don't operate as men any more. They don't have anything to base their lives on or their manhood on.' 

Sometimes it can be easy to forget the hardships that the people who created a carving might have faced in making a living. This presentation cuts through any of that to show how tough supporting oneself was at that time and in that place. I wonder if things are any better there now? 

I wish that I could have met Pauloosie Weetaluktuk, creator of this beautiful sculpture that has meant a lot to me for a long time, and told him what I've just told you. 

Passau: the beautiful baroque city where three rivers meet

Passau is a city in Bavaria, in the south-east of Germany. It is not far from the borders with Austria and the Czech Republic. 

The city has a long history and it stands on the strategically important junction between three large rivers: the Donau (known in many countries as the Danube), the Inn and the Ilz. These rivers join at a point called the drei flüsse eck (three rivers corner) at the end of the promontory on which the old town stands. From there, the river becomes the Donau (Danube).

The town is first mentioned in Roman times and was the residence of a bishop from 739 CE. Bishops became the rulers of the small independent city state of Passau in the 13th century. The town was devastated by fire in 1662 and was rebuilt shortly after, using designs by Italian masters, in the baroque style. Passau became part of Bavaria in 1803 and the baroque had a big influence on Bavarian architecture, even through to the nineteenth century palaces of King Ludwig II.

The most impressive example of this baroque architecture in Passau has to be the Cathedral of St Stephen, in the centre of the old town and surrounded by cobbled alleyways and courtyards. It was designed by Carlo Lurago, with stucco work by Giovanni Battista Carlone and frescos by Carpoforo Tencalla. The overall effect can be seen in the first image above and in these below: the floor and lower parts of the pillars of the nave are fairly sedate, rising overhead to a tumult of colour and form.

The cathedral also houses the Europe's largest cathedral organ.

Even though most of the decorative sculpture is made from stucco (which is a mixture of lime, sand, water and sometimes a binding agent such as horsehair) there is some carving in wood. The organ has carved and gilded decoration and there is a large crucifix and some smaller statues. 

Perhaps the most impressive woodcarving is on the pulpit, which was constructed from carved and gilded lime wood. Designed by Vienna-based Antonio Beduzzi, with figures carved in the workshops of Lorenzo Mattielli, it was made between 1722 and 1726:

This cathedral replaced an earlier, medieval, one which was destroyed in the fire of 1662. Now, one of the few remaining identifiable pieces of the original cathedral is a carving that has become a symbol of the town and is displayed nearby - a large face carved in stone and now known as 'Der Passauer Tölpell'.

As well as the incredible work in the Dom, more beautifully-made pieces could be seen in many of the streets and alleyways around the old town. Some were statues..

...but more impressive to me were the stunning doors leading into many of the houses and courtyards. 

I wonder if these also date to the mid-late seventeenth century?

A strange Norman stone carving in St Nicholas' church, Combe St Nicholas, Somerset

While visiting this church for a wedding, I noticed the strange carved stone capital on a pillar near the north entrance. Apparently, it is the only remnant of the Norman church that once stood on the site (although a round font dating to Saxon times is thought to be the oldest object in the church, surviving from the Saxon church building that was here before that).

It is an odd carved design and some people think that it represents the devil. I wonder why the medieval builders who rebuilt the church in the 13th century decided to keep this bit of stonework in particular? The pillar that it tops does not seem to hold up any arches, so it probably isn't structural. 

The way that the weird-looking head seems to sprout the paired 'snail track' lines out of its mouth reminds me a lot of 'green man' carvings, some of which have foliage coming from their mouths in a similar fashion. I wonder if this could be an example of such a design? According to 'The Company of the Green Man' website, this carving would seem to have been identified as such by Clive Hicks in his book 'The Green Man: A Field Guide'. 

The carving on the capital to its left looks to me like it could represent a crown.

If you are visiting the church, the oak screen in front of the altar is also worth a look. A plaque tells how it was first carved around 1480, then was taken down and moved in the 19th century before being repaired and returned to it's original position in 1921, when a memorial to the men of the parish who died in the First World War was also added to it.

Woodcarving and woodworking tools seen at the British Museum; from the Stone Ages to the Anglo-Saxons in Northern Europe

After writing about ancient Egyptian woodworking and tools from ancient Nubia and Mesopotamia, it's time to head north and look at Europe. I have focussed mainly on the woodworking tools that are in the collection of the British Museum.

Stone Ages

The Stone Ages in Britain ended with the arrival of settlers who knew how to use copper alloys to make tools and weapons, about 4,200 years ago. It's hard to find a lot of evidence of woodworking from the earliest known human habitation of Northern Europe. A perishable material like wood just doesn't often last for long enough. However, there are a reasonable amount of wooden objects known from the last part of the Stone Age, the Neolithic Period, including what was a raised wooden trackway through marshy ground. It was found in Somerset and is called the 'Sweet Track', dating to 5,821 years ago. The stone axe shown above was found at Ehenside tarn in Cumbria and dates to between 5,700 and 5,100 years ago. It is made from a local stone that was also traded elsewhere due to its suitability for toolmaking.

The Neolithic period saw an important change in the making of stone tools in Northern Europe. During the Mesolithic, about 7000 BCE, stones like flint were 'knapped'. Flakes were knocked off the workpiece to form sharp edges in order to make scrapers, knives, axes and other useful bladed tools. During the Neolithic, about 4000BCE, stone started to be ground to shape by using the time-consuming method of rubbing against abrasive stones, or perhaps leather with abrasive rock powder on it, using water to aid the process.

Why spend so much extra time grinding down blades? BBC television's 'Time Team' programme did an interesting experiment for an episode called 'Sussex Ups and Downs' aired in 2006. The action of a ground axe blade was tested (by cutting down a small hazel tree trunk) against a blade made by knapping. The ground blade was found to work much more efficiently, cutting far more cleanly and not becoming damaged by bits of timber getting lodged in the blade and causing fractures to form. It required less effort to use and would last much longer without becoming damaged beyond further use.

The objects in this image were put in a pit dug into a cairn (a mound of stones) and may well have been part of a burial. They were found at Ayton east field in North Yorkshire and date to the Late Neolithic, about 5,300 to 4, 500 years ago. There are three flint axe heads, a flint adze for carpentry work, five flint arrowheads, a flint knife with two flakes, an antler mace head and two boar tusk blades.

After seeing First Nations tools from the North-West Pacific coastline, it is obvious that complex woodcarvings were possible with the tools available in Europe before the discovery of copper alloys. The hard stones were shaped into sophisticated and sharp blades. I also wonder if the teeth of the native European beaver were used to make woodworking tools, as the teeth of American beavers were in the North-West Pacific before contact with Europeans. No such tools have been found in European archeological studies to my knowledge, but in her book Cedar, Hilary Stewart comments on how a split beaver tooth was one of the principal tools for making wooden bowls, spoons and ladles in the NW Pacific region, being the original 'hook' or 'crooked' knife. It strikes me that the boar's tusk blades shown above could perhaps also serve a similar function. She also notes how, when 'roughly hollowing out a cedar bowl using a maul and a bone-tipped chisel I had made, I was surprised by the blade's strength and cutting ability'. Stewart also notes the usefulness of mussel shell (Mytilus californianus) when scraping or shaving wood. However, she notes that it fractures easily when mallet blows are applied even though early ethnographers describe it being used in chisels.

Some very interesting and enigmatic stone carvings are known from the Neolithic. The carved chalk 'Folkton Drums' date from around the end of the Neolithic or the start of the use of copper, about 4,500 to 4,000 years ago. They are unique and were placed under the head and hips of a child buried in a barrow mound. Their purpose is unknown, although the chalk probably came from nearby Folkton Wold in Yorkshire.

These small stone objects shown below fascinate me. Over 400 have been found, mainly in northern and eastern Scotland. They come in various shapes and their use is unknown.

The Bronze Age

These bronze axes date to about 2,750 to 2,500 years ago. Two of the three below were found at Walthamstow in London and in the River Thames near the Tate Gallery, also in London. The other was found in South Yorkshire.

These axe heads were found at Petter's sports field in Surrey, England. They date to the Late Bronze Age, about 3,000 to 2,750 years ago.

The L-shaped wooden handle would fit into the socket at the back of the axehead and would be lashed on using the loop:

Image from:http://www.dorsetaonb.org.uk/assets/downloads/South_Dorset_Ridgeway/Resources/Image_bank/Replica_bronze_axe.jpg

It was interesting to see the similarities between these bronze axe heads and some found in China and Siberia shown below.

The two socketed heads on the left come from the Shang or early Western Zhou dynasties in China and date from between 3,200 and 3,002 years ago. The one on the right (note the loops) is about 3,000 to 2,800 years old and came from Southern Siberia, although it is based on a Chinese design.

There are obvious similarities between the Chinese-style bronze axehead on the right and the Northern European ones. I wonder if they show a kind of 'convergent evolution' of design, where similar requirements created similar tools, or whether they reflect a passing of ideas between cultures, perhaps by contact through ancient trade routes such as the Silk Road.

Again, a lot of wooden items from the Bronze Age must have rotted away over time. The photo below shows a wooden ladle at top left found at Flag Fen in Cambridgeshire and dating to the Middle Bronze Age (about 3,300 years ago). Around it are various bone and pottery utensils from this time until the early Iron Age (2,650 years ago) that were found in Surrey, North Yorkshire and Suffolk, England.

The Iron Age

The files, gouges and chisels in the top row came from Tiefenau in Switzerland. The tools on the left appear to have tangs ready to fit handles onto them, whereas the one on the right seems to have a ready-made handle cast as part of it. The gouge second from the right has a socket to fit a handle. No dates are given for these tools.

The adze head below them came from Lisnacrogher in County Antrim, Ireland. Below it is a circular disc cutter from King Harry Lane cemetery in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England that dates to between 2,014 and 1,064 years ago. 

In the BBC documentary 'A History of Celtic Britain: Age of Iron', Neil Oliver shows examples from a hoard of iron tools discovered near Fiskerton in Lincolnshire (the next two images are screenshots from that programme). They are thought to date to around 2,400 years ago. It is very noticeable how similar they are to tools dating from more recent times. 

Oliver holds up a file and points out that 'if someone was to show you this and say, "this is from my great-grandfather's toolbox"', you would believe them. He also shows a fragment of saw blade and notes that iron working allowed much stronger and  thinner blades than cast bronze, making more efficient tools that were relatively cheap and simple to make and repair compared to their bronze equivalents.

Roman Britain

Many of these Roman tools really are similar to modern examples. The curved blade top right is described as a 'drawknife' and came from Hod Hill in Dorset, England. It dates to the first century CE (or AD, if you prefer).  

I recognise this blade as an 'inshave'. It is used to hollow out chair seats and also by barrel-makers (coopers) for shaping the inside of barrel staves. Similar ones can be bought today from woodworking suppliers. Travelling clockwise from this blade, we come to a solid-handled punch (with a grooved face for decorating woodwork) and a broken spoon-shaped drill bit (probably used with a bow-or strap-drill according to the label), both from the 1st century CE and found at Camerton in Somerset. Bottom right is a tool suitable for use as a 'float', to remove stone in masonry work, as a coarse rasp to remove wood in carpentry or for filing horse's hooves. It also came from Hod Hill and dates to the same time as the inshave. 

The thin-bladed paring chisel on the left came from Walbrook in London and dates to the first or second century CE. It would have been hand-pushed and used for fine work. This tool has the maker's name MARTIALIS stamped onto it, a custom with tool makers that survives to this day.

The tools shown above and in the following two photos probably all date from the first or second century CE. Going clockwise from the top left;

A double-ended spatula found in London, probably used for spreading wax onto wax tablets,

A very well-preserved awl, for making small holes in wood or (more probably) leather, found in London. This one has an iron point, a bronze collar and a handle made from turned boxwood (Buxus sempervirens),

The paring chisel mentioned above,

A socketed carpenter's gouge found at Camerton in Somerset,

A carpenter's firmer chisel with a socket for a wooden handle, found at Smith's Wharf in London,

A firmer chisel with a solid handle, found as part of the 'Sandy Hoard' in Bedfordshire,

A solid-handled mortice chisel, with the handle battered down by hard use. Found at Hod Hill.

The adze head on the left was found at Camerton. The small hammer head on the other side of the eye hole for the handle has been burred by use.

In the centre is an adze-hammer, used by carpenters and boatbuilders and found at Bull's Wharf in London. The handle is a modern reconstruction.

The axe on the right also has a reconstructed handle. It is a kind of military axe called a dolabra, found at Hod Hill. It would have been carried by a Roman soldier in addition to his weapons and was used for felling trees and construction when on a campaign.

The pickaxe head at the top of this photo is immediately recognisable as such. It was found at Camerton and is a military-pattern tool, used by Roman soldiers for construction work. The axe head below it was also found at Camerton and would have been used to fell trees. It has a short inscription stamped into it, perhaps a maker's mark, but it is now impossible to read it.

The axe head at the bottom came from an unknown source, but represents the commonest kind of Roman axe. A weld line shows that the cutting edge was welded onto the rest of the axe head. This may have been hardened metal, to give a sharper cutting edge.

This ship's figurehead made of oak looks like a Viking one, but it was actually made earlier, during 300-400 CE. It was found in the River Schelde in Belgium and had a tenon allowing it to be removed, maybe for travelling under low bridges. It is not known if the figurehead was made by Gallo-Roman craftsmen, Germanic craftsmen who settled in the local area or by Germanic craftsmen who used the Gallo-Roman style.

The wooden objects shown below were found in various parts of Britain and illustrate some of the humbler day-to-day Roman uses of wood. They include spindles and spindle whorls, a tent peg, a wooden key for a wooden lock, a bowl and a strange object that is listed as a bobbin but which also looks a lot like a yo-yo. The board on the right was a barrel stave, which was reused to line a well near Mansion House in London. It bears two stamps of Fuscius Macrinus, who is thought to have been the cooper who made the barrel.

The Anglo-Saxons

These Anglo-Saxon woodworking tools were found at Hurbuck in County Durham and date to around 1,200 - 1,000 years ago. The curved adze at the top would be used for smoothing and shaping wood. The splendid T-shaped axe head is labelled as being used to 'fell and chop trees', although such a broad yet lightweight cutting edge would seem more suited to hewing felled timber into beams and boards. On the right is a spoon-shaped auger, used to drill holes in wood. You can see Dave Budd's reconstructions of such drills on one of my previous posts, which you can find by clicking on this link.

The mysterious carved symbols on the kerbstones of London

Whilst walking from Oxford Street through Soho in London, I saw this symbol carved into the kerbstone at my feet, then another further along the stone. The stones each side were not marked in such a way. At first they looked like stonemason's marks, cut to show that a certain number of kerbstones had been completed that day. But, in common with some other kerbs in the area, why two marks on a single stone?

London is not the only town or city in Britain to have such markings on its kerbs. There are apparently many in Glasgow too. No one seems to be exactly sure what they mean. Some say stonecutter's marks, showing either a certain number of kerbstones that had been laid within a particular time or a certain number shaped at the quarry. Some say that they mark surveying points, while others even say that they mark secret Masonic meeting places or are related to the Great Plague or local executions at Tyburn. These particular marks are also repeated on other stones in the area.

My own feeling is that they are probably stonecutter's marks or road laying crew signs. Maybe two symbols show either the end of one cutter's work and the start of another's, or are the foreman's marks from a particular gang of workers either shaping or laying the stones. I wonder who they were and where the stones were quarried? A visit to the remains of the stone quarries on Dartmoor will show half-finished kerbstones lying around in the wild landscape. It must have been a tough life being a stonemason up there, are those weather-beaten quarries where these stones were originally shaped?

On New Oxford Street, these signs were all carved within a run of fifteen kerbstones, with whole streets nearby not showing a single one:

Although nearby Museum Street has a few symbols on display too, surely too close to each other to show the start and finish of a run being laid:

A week later, I was walking through Bristol and noticed these marks on the kerb of Gatton Road in St Werburghs, unlikely to be a centre for Masonic ritual in my opinion: 

The same marks appeared three times on stones within a run of fifteen. The D-shaped mark then appeared again about half a mile away, alone on High Street in Easton:

...and again on South Street in Southville, on the other side of the city. This time it was accompanied by a circular mark that I haven't seen elsewhere in Bristol, apart from on that street.

While walking down Western Road, between Hove and Brighton, more kerbstone marks could be seen. These were at Second Avenue in Hove:

further along Western Road towards Brighton, more cross-shaped marks could be seen:

before letters started to appear.

Further still towards Brighton and these 'N' shaped marks could be seen. They are a little different to the others, as they were clearly made using a modern stone cutting circular saw rather than cut by hand. They were accompanied by long saw cut marks running along the kerbstones for a few metres.

I wonder if these marks point to such symbols being a road maintenance crew's work, or if it was just a bored workman messing about. The cuts along the kerbstones are pretty haphazard and not very straight.

Peter Dolan has written two very interesting articles in Geoscientist, the magazine of The Geological Society, which I recommend reading if you are also intrigued by these enigmatic markings. His first, Kerbstone Conundrum, introduces the subject and includes a list of symbols that he has seen or heard of. The second, Kerbstone Markings 2, goes into more detail. Peter has told me by email:

'Suffice it to say at present that I am 90% sure that most of these markings do relate to utility services, but haven't followed it far enough to get independent, documented verification.'

I like the way that the exact meaning of these symbols is still somewhat mysterious and subject to debate, whilst some of them are being walked past by hundreds of people every day.