Creative Woodworks & crafts 1997-12, страница 40

E.tL Tangerman:

A look at the Master Craftsman

If not for E.J. Tangerman, the field of whittling and wood carving might be a very different place indeed. Tangerman can be singlehandedly credited for not only reviving what was once a dying craft, but for bringing it to the forefront of woodcrafting.

In 1929, E.J. Tangerman graduated from Purdue University with a graduate degree in engineering. This, combined with extensive machine shop training, enabled him to become a technical editor, a field in which he excelled until Ms retirement in 1969. He won many awards in this arena and was highly acclaimed for his foresight, but in the meantime, he also learned to master another trade entirely.

Tangerman first began carving as a small child, using his father's knife, eventually becoming a self-taught expert. With his salary in the field of editing so meager, he began to write magazine articles on carving and whittling to supplement his income. As the only wood carving writer at the time, Tangerman was able to revise the Boy Scout Merit Badge pamplet on wood carving, and, in 1935, his services were retained to write Things To Do With a Pocketknife for Remington Arms Company, then a major producer of knives. This booklet, sent free to over 750,000 customers, reawakened a dormant craft. As a result, Remington found it necessary to increase its knife-making capacity by 500 percent.

This venture led directly to the production of Tangerman's first book, Whittling and Woodcarving, published in 1936. In the absence of any competing books, it rapidly became a best seller and led Tangerman to recognition as the authority on the subject. This book is slill in print, and to date has sold over 250,000 copics.

E.J. Tangerman has written a total of 18 books and two pamplcts on the subjects of wood carving and whittling, and has written a column called "Tangents"

Wildlife is always a popular subject. Here are ■three fish carved by E.J. Tangerman

for Chip Chats. He has been called the "dean of woodcarvers" and the "man most responsible for the rebirth of wood carving," and became the first international member of England's Guild of Master Craftsmen in 1982. Tangerman still leaches an advanced class in wood carving each July at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina.

E.J. Tangerman's "Seahorse" carving project begins on the following page.