By Mason Edwards, Chattanooga Times Free Press
As the instructor at the nation's only full-time carousel-animal carving school, Larry Ridge, 75, is keeping a centuries-old tradition alive — one at risk of being forgotten.
Across the country, hundreds of antique carousels, with turn-of-the-century music and wooden animals, were made long before plastic or aluminum animals became commonplace. Carousel-animal carving is the craft of hand-shaping wooden figures fit for riding on a carousel, and few places in the world restore or build new antique-style figures anymore.
At Ridge's workshop, posters of carnival artwork and unfinished, 4-foot-tall carvings of frogs, eagles, fish and horses fill the room. Those pieces, some as old as the late 1800s, represent a long line of craftspeople who transform wooden blocks into flowing manes and realistic limbs. "The carousel is pure pleasure," he says. "It's an escape into a world of light, music and beauty."
Every crevice and corner is full of character, from the box of look-alike animal eyes to a wall full of photographs, news clippings and letters that tell the story of the Horsin' Around Carousel Carving School. The school stopped counting its students years ago after reaching well over 800.
Within that count are retirees, international visitors and families — all eager to learn the art of carousel carving. Sometimes they walk in with ideas outside the box, like creating Pokémon-themed rockers for their kids. Ridge, never shy of a challenge, indulges his students. "The people who come in here, they're all a little off-center," Ridge says with a laugh. "They're good, functional people, but they have that twinkle in their eye."
Ridge's love for carving began at 14. In the 1960s, at his suburban home in Chattanooga, Ridge remembers practicing for hours with an X-Acto knife set, a Christmas gift from his Sunday school teacher. He finds it foretelling that his first project, a Bellamy eagle, became a recurring style he's worked with for the past 50 years.
Ridge joined a woodcarvers' club where he met Bud Ellis, founder of Horsin' Around Carousel Carving School. "Bud taught me to just start carving," Ridge remembers. "There's no failure in this place. It was only that you're not finished yet."
Ellis invited Ridge to work on the Coolidge Park Carousel project, and Ridge carved a goat that is still part of the carousel today. "I love sitting at the Coolidge Park Carousel, watching people ride," he says. "When someone chooses [to ride] one of my carvings, I like to ask what drew them to it. Hearing their reasons makes all the work worthwhile."
When Ellis retired, he entrusted the school to Ridge, who has worked to carry on Ellis's legacy by emulating his teaching style and methods. "My job is to give students the tools they need to succeed," Ridge explains, "but the real reward comes when they figure it out themselves."
Ridge carves by hand, using techniques and tools from 120 years ago. If a carousel-animal carver from 1910 showed up at Ridge's workshop, they would know exactly what to do. "I can take a chisel that's mine, and it matches the same cutting profile as a carver's from 100 years ago, and I can carve the same way he did."
Crafting a carousel animal begins with several blocks of wood glued together in the rough shape of the animal. Ridge overlays a design on the wood's surface with an overhead projector and sketches the animal's outline. From there, one chisel cut at a time transforms the blocks into smooth, lifelike forms. "The cool thing is, on these animals, it's all proportional," Ridge explains. "If I can find out what the distance from the muzzle to the center of the eye is, I can tell you what [the other measurements are]."
Carousel-animal carvers often hide photographs, trinkets and messages in their carvings' hollow interiors. When restoration work is needed, often decades later, the items are rediscovered. "I've put family photos and dates inside some of my carvings," Ridge says. "It's a way to leave a little bit of myself for the future."
Ridge's goal is to teach a student enough so that he can pass the shop down like his mentor did to him. "If I don't share what I've learned, it could all be lost in a generation," Ridge says.
In the meantime, he's determined to keep carousel magic alive, adding, "if you're one of those people who give up everything to do this work, you're one of the greatest people in the world."
Find Ridge's work at the Horsin' Around Carousel Carving School in Soddy-Daisy or on their Facebook page, and read more about his life at tnfolklife.org.
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