Selected Writings

Monument to a Master

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Of his efforts to replicate the bear on the ashtray, he said, “I did pretty well carving the body, but I had a terrible time with the limbs. The legs on the clay bear showed movement and I couldn’t figure out what the artist had done to make them look that way.   “I thought it was only a clay ash tray,” he said, his voice evidencing the chagrin he still felt. “I cut the bear off it so I could see what was inside the legs. I wrecked the piece trying to get it off the ashtray and pull out the copper wires.”

The boy was Philip T. (Tom) Baker, who someday would build a museum to house the works of the great Earle E. Heikka, the artisan whose exquisite carving he held in his hand. Baker, fifty-eight when I interviewed him in 1995, was a soft spoken man of average height and build, whose eyes behind his glasses, and shaded under the shaped brim of the western-style hat he always wore, glowed with emotion but did not reveal much of their hazel hue.

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