Artists can use wood to create delicate sculptures
Wood has long been used as an artistic medium. It has been used to make sculptures and carvings for centuries. Examples include the totem poles carved by North American indigenous people from conifer trunks, often Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata), and the Millenium clock tower, now housed in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
It is also used in woodcut printmaking, and for engraving.
Certain types of musical instruments, such as those of the violin family, the guitar, the clarinet and recorder, the xylophone, the piccolo, and the marimba, are made mostly or entirely of wood. The choice of wood may make a significant difference to the tone and resonant qualities of the instrument, and tonewoods have widely differing properties, ranging from the hard and dense (african blackwood used for the bodies of clarinets to the light but resonant European spruce (Picea abies)) traditionally used for the soundboards of violins. The most valuable tonewoods, such as the ripple sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), used for the backs of violins, combine acoustic properties with decorative colour and grain which enhance the appearance of the finished instrument.
As a contemporary artistic medium, wood is used in traditional and modern styles, and is an excellent medium for new art. Wood is used in forms of sculpture, craft, and decoration including chip carving, wood burning, and marquetry. Wood offers a fascination, beauty, and complexity in the grain, that often shows even when the medium is painted.