The team of the Art Workshop “Applied Arts: Wood Carving” organized three events in November dedicated to one of the most ancient crafts in the history of mankind – wood carving. The 10 participants in the Art Workshop started the month with an open lesson on the secrets of carpentry or wood carving, which is an applied art but also a craft for making objects and carvings from wood. Wood carving has a long way to go, which, like many of our crafts, at the same time as its pure functionality, goes beyond practical needs and is distinguished as an artistic craft.
“In every Bulgarian home there is at least one wooden pan, but if today they are just an accent in the kitchen or a souvenir, then centuries ago the majority of household utensils were made of wood,” says the head of the art workshop, Ivan Ludjov. Housewares and utensils made of wood in the traditional home are distinguished by exceptional strength, warmth and comfort. Men made all the wooden objects – from the eating spoon and the bowls, to the tables and chairs. The most characteristic of the craft is the manual processing of the wood. Cups, ladles, spindles and mantelpieces, bread kneaders and troughs for the primary processing of grapes, made by coopers, are extremely diverse. Specialists find in them preserved elements of primitive art and an incredibly good sense of form and practicality.
As the craftsmanship has been passed down from father to son, the 10 art workshop participants open a 1-day Kopanicraft Museum in tribute to the long history of the craft to present their already completed works created through the stages of training, following local traditions in the area of Dolna Banya.

The potters worked primarily to satisfy their own needs for crude but strong and functional vessels. This craft did not require special training or extensive training, nor did it require complex tools. It is directly related to the favorable, mostly mountainous conditions, where the local forests abound in a variety of timber. The most commonly used wood species preferred by coopers are walnut, ash, sycamore, pear, apple and plum. These are also the predominant types of wood from which the student works were made for the one-day museum of the art workshop in Dolna Banya.
The works are made according to the traditional model of the craft with only a few hand tools: a simple straight knife or kustur (a folding knife with a heel), a chisel, a compass, a chisel and an adze. Centuries ago, with the help of such tools, coppersmiths made many items for personal and domestic use: spoons, gages, kuteli (large cups with a handle for water and milk), salt shakers, kopankas, etc. Some of them were decorated with relief carving, sometimes with sculpted three-dimensional figures of animals and birds. Such decorative details also decorate the works of the young kopanicari artists from the “Applied Arts: Wood Carving” art workshop, which were installed outdoors in the park in Dolna Banya on November 24, as the end of the kopanicari month.