The Drill in Sculpture from Ancient Egypt to Modernism

“The story of the use of the drill in European sculpture has not yet been written, although it should be fascinating.” So argued Rudolf Wittkower in one of the lectures on the processes and principles of sculpture that he gave as Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Cambridge in 1970. In agreement with Wittkower’s view, this volume presents a series of case studies on the use of the drill ranging from ancient Egypt to the beginning of the twentieth century. Conceived as a catalogue for an ideal exhibition, the book illustrates, in chronological order, various works of art whose creation significantly depended on this tool: not only statues and bas-reliefs, but also architectural decoration, vases in precious stone and utilitarian objects, made in a range of materials including marble, wood, clay, ivory and more. This variety highlights the extraordinary challenge faced over millennia by the drill in its numerous forms (bow drills, gimlets, pump drills, to name but a few), which did not undergo significant technological transformation until the advent of electricity. This tool directly confronted, to a greater extent than others, the hardness of the sculptural materials, piercing them, splitting them and manipulating them beyond any apparent limitation set by nature. In its tussle with the drill, the very affordance of the material was threatened, defeated by the expressive will of the sculptors, their visual cultures, their frames of reference and their notions of nature and art. This volume is devoted to the exploration and understanding of this challenge.