Medieval carving is probably my favourite style of carving. At first glance, it can often appear simplistic or naive, but the more time you spend looking at it, the more complexity you see in it. Medieval carvings have a sense of freedom and instinctiveness in them that is wonderful to see. They weren’t made in the tighter, more rigorous mode of later carving, but instead in an intuitive way that somehow manages to make mistakes (often many), and not have it be to the detriment of the finished piece. Often, the mistakes make the carvings better for it. Carvers were working day in, day out, in one style, and it meant that they needn’t work to models or drawings for a lot of their carvings - in fact many of them appear to be created off the cuff. More complex scenes like those featured in miserichords may well have had some reference, but the running ornament and foliate details that are so often seen in cathedrals were forms the craftsmen would have worked with time and again, until they could be carved without needing to reference anything but their own experience. There were similar expectations of many of the carving workshops throughout history, that they should become so familiar with the form of ornament, but when this is combined with the almost playful medieval aesthetic, this lends the carving a fluidity that’s very appealing, and often a deceptive simplicity that belies the skill of the craftsman who made it.