Hand Carved

Herb E. Smith. 1981. 16 mm Film. 

Chester Cornett has made chairs for presidents. His work is displayed in museums across the country. In Hand Carved, Chester fells a tree on the site of his family’s homeplace near the top of Pine Mountain in Eastern Kentucky and transports it back to his small apartment/workshop in inner-city Cincinnati. Cornett tells the story of his apprenticeship with his grandfather and uncle, and the personal and economic reasons he left the mountains. Intricate camerawork illustrates the process Cornett uses to chop, whittle, and carve the wood into an exquisite, eight-legged, “two-in-one” rocker designed for the film. As when Chester explains to the viewer that "I've traded a chair many-a-time for groceries," Hand Carved reveals the precarious life of an artist struggling to survive in a society accustomed to mass production.

“A remarkably sustained series of privileged moments … a lovely machine-made tribute to fading handmade craftsmaking.”— The Washington Post

“In the age of computers and nuclear power, Hand Carved will build an awareness and appreciation of the craftsmanship that reflects another time.”— Voice of Youth Advocates

“There are times when you realize that the entire world and even universe is no larger than the spirit and mind of a single human being. Hand Carved was for me the occasion of such a time. The film’s spirit is about a single human whom, it seems to me, not even the galaxy could humble if it fell on him in one great heap … Chester Cornett is a hero, a gentle survivor of hard times, bad luck, lost love and a kitchen that must be the most colossal mess of any place outside the federal budget office.”— Karl Hess, author

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