Who is the Green Man?

Green Man Gallery

Green Man 'Rules'

Books about Green Men

Write to me first, telling me a little about your carving.

Some Green Men by me, Chris Pye, are to be found in the website gallery and Green Men projects in my book Elements of Woodcarving, and here is the embryonic:

With these sources as my reference, it is easy to see patterns ('rules' for want of a better term):

Green Men are:

1. Male, of varying age (only one or two female heads are known; more bestial and distorted is a little more common)
2. Represented by their heads only (no hands parting the bushes; very rarely body)
3. Seen from the front
4. Foliate: leaves erupt from the face itself, mouth, nose eyes etc, rarely flowers
5. Not hairy: they don't have long beards; nor fangs for that matter; nor horns (though primitive beards and hair do occasionally appear).

The majority of what I might call the 'classic' or 'traditional' Green Men follow a very simple pattern: male head, front view, leaves - and I suggest this is what we call the 'Green Man', finding other names for other images.

These Green Men are not 'Wild Men of the Woods', Father Christmas-like Wood Spirits, Ents, Pan, Goblins, and so on. Those are later, even modern, interpretations.

I would like to see some variation in the names for what is being carved; carvers seem often to be talking about different products. (For example 'Wood Spirit' could be more the swirling beard type.)
In this way interested carvers don't arrive at a website expecting the 'true' Green Man only to find a sort of Gandalf with birds in his hair, and a token twig.

And Green Men were carved, not modelled; this gives them a very distinct character. They were carved because that is what builders did then (we have no examples of architecture-free Green Men, as are carved now; or pottery ones from anything but recent times).

Note too - they were not spoiled by sanding but kept the freshness of the chisel.
So, for me wood and stone are the materials of choice. Woodcarvers can give the Green Man that special carved look which is alien to the way of handling clay and making pottery.

The classic Green Man arose out of a particular worldview and experience.
None of us has that now, and it is quite right that we carve what we feel; the results will look different unless we are simply copying.

I'm all for seeing the whole genre explored deeply, as I think it is beginning to be; and it's easy just to do 'your own thing'. I think that clarity is needed to focus both carvers in their explorations, and the Green Men that appear.

More and more, woodcarvers are engaging the theme and I find myself thinking about who and what is being carved.
So, these are just my thoughts. Are you a carver of Green Men? I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say.

• The eEdicott Studio of Mythic Arts
• The Green Man
• World Tree
• At the Edge (Ruth Wylie: The Green Man Variations on a Theme)
• The Search for the Green Man (Mike Harding's Website)
• The Green Man: East Anglia Website.
• Ryedale Green Men - N. Yorkshire