MANSFIELD — A guy I know who sometimes drinks at The Happy Grape also happens to work at Mansfield’s Carousel Works, the local funhouse factory where they put together full-size working carousels featuring hand-carved wooden animals.
“We’ve got a new wood carver,” he told me. “Fredy, from Peru. Interesting guy. You should meet him.”
I thought this was a good idea, especially as I’d never seen inside the Works.
The man he was referring to is Fredy Mallqui from Ayacucho, Peru. He arrived in Mansfield in September after hearing about the Carousel Works through friends and others in the trade.
“I wanted to find interesting work for my skills,” he told me, “so I talked to Art and I sent him my portfolio. Up till now I’ve always been self-employed. I’m a freelance wood carver, an art conservator.”
Did you come here straight from Peru?
“No, I came to Erie, Pennsylvania six years ago. What brought me here? It was love!” he chuckled.
Of course. There’s always a woman involved.
“My wife Robin is from Erie,” Fredy told me. “We met in Peru and we lived there for five years. I’d never heard of Erie. I knew the bigger places like Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh – but Erie, no.”
Fredy explained that the hardest part of relocating to the U.S. was learning the language (Robin spoke fluent Spanish but Fredy did not speak English), including all the technical words of his trade.
“It took me two years to be able to communicate and find work,” he said, adding that it’s difficult to line up work if you can’t answer the phone in English.
Fredy told me his hometown of Ayacucho had in earlier times been a settlement of the ancient Wari culture, from around 500 to 1000 A.D.
“It was a culture that was very talented in the crafts,” he explained, “ceramics, gold, silver and also textile work. Some of the most exquisite pieces are still intact, they’ve been preserved.”
Ayacucho was a Spanish colony from the 1540s.
“In Peru it’s known as the Capital of the Craftsmen,” Fredy continued, “much like cities in Italy, like Venice. There are still many craftsmen there: carvers, goldsmiths … it’s a very artistic city.”
How aware of this were you growing up?
“I was very influenced by it, what was happening around me. I was eight or nine when I started carving. I learned by observing master carvers. I’ve been around maybe twenty in my life. I learned their techniques.”
What does it take to be a master carver, is there a set standard?
“No,” said Fredy, “but In Peru, some master carvers are recognized by the government and paid a monthly wage for life. They’re very proud of their country and the tradition that they carry on.”
Did you come from a family of carvers?
“No,” Fredy said, explaining that this made it hard to learn, as the skills in the workshops are typically passed down through family members.
“We don’t have big museums or anything like that, so the place where you get to see the work is in the churches,” he told me. “I went to the old guys and asked to learn. You begin from the lowest point, cleaning the shop. To start with, I wasn’t allowed to even touch the tools.
“You see it’s hard to get accepted as an apprentice if you’re not family. I was ten years old when I really started to carve. I thought if I stay here a while, they’ll trust me. Eventually, the owner allowed me to carve a molding for a piece of furniture. He liked it, so I got more pieces to work on.”
Did this become your job?
“I wasn’t making a living!” he laughed. ”I did other jobs. I worked six years as a baker. I worked during the night. In the day I would study, in the afternoon I was at the shop.
“Kids can work there,” he said, referring to his native Peru. “You would be punished here for making kids do that, but there you have to do something. Later on I worked construction, I did a bit of everything, because you can’t make a living from carving unless you have your own workshop. There’s a lot of competition and your name needs to be respected, which is harder if you’re not from the family.”
What sort of carving work have you had here in the U.S. as a freelancer?
“Now, my customers are interior designers, furniture companies. And I work on restoration projects. My specialty is decorative pieces. (For new commissions) people want something original; over the years you observe different styles and from this you make your own.
“I also work on mirrors, often in a Peruvian baroque style. I do some gilded pieces, too. I do the gilding myself (applying gold leaf). You need to learn this technique if you’re a carver.
“But restoration work,” he continued, “is different from making furniture. You have to respect the original piece. Don’t change too much. It’s about cleaning, the replacement of pieces, structural consolidation. And you are often part of a team, working with a historian, a curator and so on.
“With a restoration project, if it’s not done well, someone will see it’s not right. So I model in clay first so I can get it exactly how I want it, before I carve the piece in wood.”
Isn’t modeling in clay very different from carving wood?
“Of course, with clay you are adding. With wood you are reducing. But with clay you can change things without having to carve a new piece of every time.”
Do you use your own set of tools?
“Yes, and the range of tools depends on how fancy it’s going to be, how deep the cut, how small the detail. The more detail, the more tools.
“It’s like if you’re sketching,” Fredy continued, “you use different pens. You might start with a 4B pencil, then go darker, with an 8 or a 9B. With carving it’s the same. By the end the workbench looks like a disaster, but that’s how I work. I work fast.”
Fredy told me about a major project he worked on in Peru, restoring a church built in the early 1600s.
“It was in very bad condition. We had to dismantle the altar when it was damaged after a fire. It took three years to replace and restore. We were a crew of 25 people: carvers, gilders, architects. In a huge project like that you learn how to do everything. You have to.”
After moving to Mansfield, Fredy is now in the process of setting up his home workshop.
“I’m easy, not complicated,” he told me. “I’ve heard other carvers say: I don’t have the studio, the space, the tools. But if you think like that you’ll never get anywhere. If you don’t have a workbench, build your own!”
Check out more of Fredy’s work at his website, https://fredyartworkrestoration.com.
