Article: Boston's nineteenth century ship carvers.

The main character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Drowne's Wooden Image" (1846) is a wood carver in colonial Boston. A skilled and respected mechanic whose main business was producing ship's figureheads, Shem Drowne achieved the status of an artist when love inspired him to create a figurehead that seemed imbued with the spark of life. [1] Hawthorne validates the genius of his character's new work by having the artist John Singleton Copley (1738-l815) visit Drowne's shop and proclaim that if "this work were in marble it would. make you famous at once." [2]

The distinction Hawthorne draws between the importance of a figure carved in wood and one carved in ...

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