The Carvers

Three continents. One tradition. Every piece in this collection is carved entirely by hand.

Georges Boujikly

Beirut → Kansas, USA

Georges apprenticed at fourteen in Beirut, carving period furniture under a master's eye for five years. After immigrating to Canada in 1969, a career in education and ministry, and a move to the United States in 2001 with his wife Carolyn and four daughters, he returned to the chisel after a decades-long pause. Twenty years on, his functional art — boxes, trays, wall pieces, figures — is carved exactly the way it was taught to him: chisels and gouges, never machines.

His preferred woods: bass, walnut, butternut, maple, and rosewood.

Edgar Hovhannisyan

Armenia

Edgar began carving at thirteen. He works late at night at a single table in his kitchen, after his wife, mother, and two children are asleep, drawing on the stone-carved heritage of Armenian convents, cathedrals, and cemetery khachkars. He carves in walnut and hornbeam — a dense white ironwood that holds a razor edge — using tools he forges himself. His specialty is boxes, and his precision has been called phenomenal.

Edgar was unable to obtain a visa to accompany his work to the United States, so his pieces are here without him — each one an ambassador.

Watch him work: @Edgarswoodworks on YouTube

D. K. Sharma

India

A National Award–winning carver, D.K. specializes in miniature three-dimensional work in Indian white wood and rosewood, shaped with a small dental-style rotary tool. His collaboration with Georges produced the Nativity — seven months of daily work inspired by Caravaggio.

Watch him work: @dkwoodcarvingtips on YouTube