Netsuke Carver to Give Demonstration at the Art Museum

Nick Lamb, Netuske carver
Image courtesy of the artist

Nick Lamb will be at the Art Museum on Monday, Oct. 5, to give a demonstration on carving netsuke from 6 - 8 pm. Netsuke are small carvings used in traditional Japanese clothing to counterbalance pouches hung over the belt of kimonos.

The demonstration is scheduled to coincide with the exhibition, Ichiro: A Life's Work of Netsuke, The Huey G. and Phyllis T. Shelton Collection. Ichiro was a 20th century carver and the Shelton collection is the largest known collection by a single netsuke artist. It was gifted to the University of Wyoming Art Museum this year. The exhibition runs from Sept. 12 through Dec. 22, 2009.

Lamb was trained as a graphic designer at the Berkshire College of Art in his native England. He started woodcarving in 1973; by the early 1980s, he was winning woodcarving prizes. He carved his first nestuke in 1983. Since then, he has become one of the most celebrated non-Japanese carvers of netsuke and other traditional Japanese miniature forms.

Lamb's work has been exhibited internationally, including the British Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, the Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin, the Chiba City Museum of Art in Japan, and the Museum of Art & Design in New York. He is a member of the Society of Animal Artists.