Antiquity

New icons made on Mount Athos, a secluded monastic state in northern Greece. Especially notable are icons painted on weathered wood, combined with wood carving that reaches back to centuries of Orthodox tradition. New icons made on Mount Athos, like this Maria with nice ornamental […]

Gauguin missed the bisj poles. In search of authentic woodcarving in Polynesia, he would have been better off traveling to Papua New Guinea than to Tahiti. In this former Dutch colony, the culture of carving bisj poles was still thriving around 1890. Gauguin missed the

Queen Tiy: Oldest Wooden Bust in Egypt. Carved around 1353 BCE from yew wood, this bust is nearly 3,400 years old. Exceptionally small yet impressive, it is considered the oldest known wooden bust from the Egyptian civilization. It serves as a rare milestone in the history of wood sculpture.

The Royal Standard of Ur is one of the most evocative objects to survive from the dawn of urban civilization. Created around 2600–2400 BCE, during the Early Dynastic period of Sumer, it offers a rare, intimate view of how one of the world’s first complex societies imagined

The Idol of Samos is one of the few surviving wooden sculptures from classical antiquity. The figurine was carved around 650 BC in Greece. The painting or even the dressing of this ‘idol’ has perished over the centuries. The Idol of Samos: was it the