The Drill in Sculpture

From Ancient Egypt to Modernism

D'Agostino, Paola (ed.)
Simonato, Lucia (ed.)

The story of the use of the drill in European sculpture has not yet been written, although it should be ‘fascinating’, stated Rudolph Wittkower in 1970 in Cambridge, where he was invited to give a series of lectures on the processes and principles of sculpture as Slade Professor. Following Wittkower’s intuition, this volume presents case studies of the use of the drill, ranging from Ancient Egypt to the beginning of the twentieth century. Conceived as a catalogue to an ideal exhibition, it illustrates various objects for whose creation the use of this tool was particularly significant. Organized in chronological progression, these are not limited to statues and bas-reliefs, but also include architectural decorations, vases in precious stones as well as utilitarian objects, made in a range of materials such as marble, wood, clay or ivory.
This variety highlights the extraordinary challenge faced over millennia by the drill in its numerous forms (bow drills, gimlets, wheels, pump drills, to name but a few), which did not undergo any significant technological transformations until the advent of electricity. This tool directly confronted, more so than others, the sculptural materials in their hardness, penetrating them, splitting them and manipulating them beyond any apparent limitation set by nature. Nevertheless, in its tussle with the drill, the very agency of the material was threatened, defeated in the face of the expressive will of the sculptors, their visual cultures, their systems of normative references, and their notions of nature and art. It is to the exploration and understanding of this challenge that this volume is dedicated.