#lumbering

New Year's Eve

As we wind down our winter work and settle in to await the New Year, we take a moment to consider the fruits of our labors over the past year and contemplate the coming of the new one. To help with that, on this last Wood Engraving Wednesday of 2025, we offer these engravings by English/American artist, writer, and illustrator Clare Leighton (1898-1989) from Clare Leighton’s Rural Life: An Anthology, published in Oxford by the Bodleian Library in 2023. The book was edited with an introduction by Leighton’s devoted nephew, David Leighton (1931-2022), who sadly did not live to see its publication. Clare Leighton was one of the most prolific and highly regarded wood engravers of her time, leaving behind a body of work that reflected her rural life in Britain and North America.

Claire Leighton was leery of growing urbanization in the 1920s and 1930s, as the Great Depression led to fears that many might never again earn a living from traditional work on the land. This is evident in the first engraving, Snow Shovelers (1929). The following engravings are part of a series documenting her time in a lumber camp on the Quebec-Ontario border in 1931. Her nephew writes:

At first the men of the camp were suspicious of this lone woman. However, when she hid her fear at the howling of the wolves and shared the men's food and some of their hardships she won their respect. They told her fantastic tales of Paul Bunyan . . . and she was able to make numerous pencil sketches and notes.

The text continues with excerpts from Claire Leighton's diary recounting her several outings with the lumberjacks in the dead of winter.

On this last, cold December night, we wish you a warm and safe New Year.

View posts from New Year's Eves past.

View more posts from this book.

View more posts with work by Clare Leighton.

View more posts with work by women wood engravers.

SICHUAN TAKIN (like rockin’) Budorcas taxicolor tibetana Male (top) and Female (bottom) Also called GNU GOAT or CATTLE CHAMOIS :) Los Angeles Zoo, Los Angeles, California USA ©Laura Quick

The takin, is a large lumbering-looking species of ungulate of the subfamily Caprinae (related to goats) found in higher elevations over 14,000 feet (4,300 meters) in the eastern Himalayas. When it comes to food, takins eat almost any vegetation from leaves of evergreen rhododendrons and oaks, willow and pine bark, bamboo leaves, and a variety of new-growth leaves and herbs.

They can easily stand on their hind legs, front legs propped against a tree, to reach for higher vegetation. Takins have adaptations that help them stay warm and dry during the bitter cold of winter in the Himalayan Mountains.

A thick, secondary coat is grown to keep out the chill.

They are surprisingly nimble when speed is necessary on steep and rocky terrain. 

The large, moose-like snout has large sinus cavities to warm up the air a takin inhales before it gets to the lungs. Without this adaptation, takins would lose a large amount of body heat just by breathing.

They have oily skin. Although they have no skin glands, their skin secretes an oily, bitter-tasting substance that acts as a natural raincoat in storms and fog. Streaks of this oily stuff can be seen where takins rub.

They also have an odor that smells like a combination of horse and musk.

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Takin mom and kid

Sichuan Takin

Charles has stumbled into a most unfortunate fate. In this case, that fate is a wooden, gum-spotted wall and the stumbling is very literal.

He enters Sir’s office, face sheepish, speckled in pink spots: one a stretched out taffy tentacle on his neck like he tried to pull it off, one on the knot of his tie, two on his coat lapel, and one on his shirt collar.

          “Ah, oh, forgive me, I seem to have gotten myself into a, ah--”

           “--sticky situation.”

Log Boom, Commencement Bay, Tacoma, 1974.

Wood Engraving Wednesday

CLARE LEIGHTON

Here are a few engravings from a recent acquisition for our reference collection on the engravings of English/American artist, writer, and illustrator Clare Leighton (1898-1989), Clare Leighton's Rural Life: An Anthology, published in Oxford by the Bodleian Library in 2023. The book was edited with an introduction by Leighton's devoted nephew David Leighton (1931-2022), who sadly did not live to see its publication. Clare Leighton was one of the most prolific and highly regarded wood engravers of her time, leaving behind a body of work that reflected her rural life in Britain and North America.

During the 1930s, as the world around her became increasingly technological, industrial, and urban, Leighton portrayed rural folk and the ancient methods they used to work the land that would soon vanish forever. Her two best-loved publications, Four Hedges (1931) and The Farmer's Year (1933), reflect this passion for the British countryside. Less well known are her books illustrating and describing rural life in the United States, where she emigrated and became a naturalized citizen in 1945. Leighton also spent time in Canada with the logging community, winning the respect of Canadian lumberjacks by adopting their way of life. Her wood engravings depicting lumberjacks in the snow-covered forests of Canada are some of her most evocative prints.

This anthology includes beautifully reproduced extracts and David Leighton's detailed introduction to the artist's life and work, reflecting Clare Leighton's lifelong fascination with the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land.

View more posts with work by Clare Leighton.

View more posts with work by women wood engravers.

View more Women’s History Month posts.