Akron Life September 2022

AMISH COUNTRY

by Kelly Petryszyn and Alexandra Sobczak

Arts Center Find exquisite works by craftspeople in Amish Country.

TOP NOTCH See masterful train carvings at a Dover museum.

“When you start to hear his life story … there’s an awe

plus button collection and Alpine-style ornamental gardens, which contain plantings like spring crocus and snowdrops done by Frieda herself. Warther’s humble beginnings made his achievements espe cially profound. His dad died when he was 3, he was only educated through second grade, and he worked as a cattle herder starting at 5 years old and at the American Sheet

and Tin Co. factory later on. Finding that knife helped him carve out a whittling hobby. In 1913, the then-27-year-old created his now-famous plier tree, with 511 pairs of pliers made from 31,000 cuts into a single piece of walnut — and each pair is functional. While walking to the steel mill, he passed railroad tracks in Dover and decided to carve

A rusty pocketknife found on the side of a dirt road in Dover, Ohio, set Ernest Warther on the path to earning the title of the world’s master carver. He became renowned for his intricate carvings of steam engines that display their history from ancient Egypt till the end of their run in the mid-1900s.

inspiring sense behind all of his work,” says Kristen Harmon, director of the Ernest Warther Museum & Gardens and Warther’s great-grandchild. Built on the site of the late carver and his wife Frieda’s 1912 home, the museum showcases 64 of Warther’s impressive steam engines, along with other work. It also features Frieda’s 73,000

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