Carving

When we talk about carving in Sardinia, we refer mainly to the decoration executed on the traditional wooden case, the 'cascia' ('ark' in the Campidano of Oristano).
Of varying size, it was carried as a dowry by the bride who placed the kit inside but who, if necessary, used for other uses: the most common was to store the supply of wheat necessary for baking. Of the bride, of her femininity capable of giving rise to another life, the box fully retained its characteristics, it constituted her symbolic object, reaffirming her connection in every detail of the decorative cycle.
The case was placed on two movable easels, of which only the feet on the front were visible. There are many shapes given to these footholds: the most common one featured the hoofed foot of a wild boar, an animal sacred to the moon in archaic mythologies. The easels, insulating it from the ground, preserved its durability. However, they give the fund a sense of dynamic provisionality, a mobility for a transit that is not definitive.
The wood was mainly chestnut, treated with a bite composed of goat or ox blood, which gave a deep but transparent dark red color; a tone that, in the thirties models, was interpreted as absolute black, obtained with covering paint. Following various investigations, today even less usual treatments are beginning to be considered archaic, which cover the box with earthy pigments in brick red or ochre.
There are two main types of case: the Barbarian model, with a vertical development with an entirely historized front (“sample”), and the Lussurgese model, with a horizontal pattern with a smooth front panel. The latter is approached by the “Jesuit” box originally from Oliena (Nuoro).
The small or very small boxes ('cascioneddu') that accompany the spread of the other larger ones would seem older. Judgment motivated by the greater simplification of carving designs and a stricter sense of decorum. Next to the box, and of almost exclusive ecclesiastical use, are the benches with the seat and backrest shaped like “elle” where, on the front of the latter, carved decorations appear whose motifs are in any case the same as the “samples” in the boxes. Similarly, with decorations concentrated mainly in the crossbars of the backrest, chairs were made with a very rigid shape, however infrequent.

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