Where’s that wolf? is a wooden panel about the hunt for the Dutch ‘problem wolf’ Bram who was missing for months. Eventually the animal was shot.
Where’s that wolf? Take a good look at the right curtain.
On my panel too the wolf is not immediately visible. Very clear in the elm wood is the little head of a cat. Or a squirrel, as one of my friends on Facebook suggested when I asked for suggestions.
The wolf itself has hidden much better, in the right part of the curtain. I call this Dendroism. The story is already in the wood, you just have to reinforce it, or add something yourself. Like a deep crack in the wood, which I turned into a ravine, creating a mountain ridge. With a lonely spruce in the distance.
This panel is now the third in a series with beautiful elm wood. The second ‘Future Outlook’ I sold as a commission. I found the thick plank in the ‘remnants rack’ of Tafelboom in Utrecht. This sawmill processes only locally felled wood. With a purchase you even receive a kind of ‘memorial card’ with a photo of your tree and its old address. So nice.
Linenfold panels at a dream location
Tafelboom is now one of my favorite suppliers of wood, besides felled trees on the Oud-Zandbergen estate. Here my club of woodworkers Guts en Klopper rents a studio. A dream location, for a woodworker.
At my association we also reproduced ‘linenfold panels’. They are closing parts of historical cabinets. As an unsuspecting viewer you quickly walk past them, because these folds and curls at the end of the panels seem very simple. But they are very difficult to carve, those Tarzan bends. I therefore make a deep bow to the furniture makers of the past, who carved perfectly flawless patterns without mechanical tools.
Oak cabinet from the 16th century with linenfold panels on the doors: for sale for 6000 euros.
Their example gradually transitions into a curtain shape in my panel. The folds of the linenfold panel flow into the beautiful lines in the tough elm wood, which after sanding can also be beautifully polished.
And that poor wolf Bram. At the club we did talk about him. One of the other wood carvers suggested that Bram followed people because he had been deliberately fed. “Then people want to take a photo of him and throw some food down to lure him. Not strange that he then walks after people.”
It could very well be true. I don’t know. But while making this panel I often thought about Bram. And how cleverly he was able to hide for so long in this densely populated country.
‘Where’s that wolf?’ was preceded as a panel by ‘Stage Fright’.
Because an earlier panel about stage fright ‘Stage Fright’ (with a hand pushing the curtain aside) went to my daughter, I asked if my son wanted ‘Where’s that wolf’. He was very eager to have it. So my Bram will henceforth hide in Amsterdam, looking out over the IJ.
