Carving is the act of using tools to shape something from a material by scraping away portions of that material. The technique can be applied to any material that is solid enough to hold a form even when pieces have been removed from it, and yet soft enough for portions to be scraped away with available tools.

Slate Carving is not a very popular Art Form at least in India and worldwide. Due to its intrinsic limitations that the Slate Stone has lots of thin layers in in and it needs tremendous amount of extra efforts to ensure that while using carving tools some layers are not chipping off from the main body of the stone and also the stone is not applied with any extra force than what it would enthrall. If not controlled carefully, the slate stone breaks of easily. In India, “Slate Carving” can be found in the interiors of the State of Odisha and State of Pashim Banga. All the carving designs created by the artisans residing in these areas are primary based up on mythological events & characters and village & folk contextual.

A piece of slate stone is picked first and then sized according to the concept. The stone some time required finishing on the top as well. The artisan would then place his imagination on the slate in a rough sketch form. In second stage the artisan needs to adopt the carving techniques to get the sketch getting its desired shape and form either by carving a line out or removing some back ground portion by which the design become prominent. The challenge with the artisan is get the sketch design to the foreground by carving and scrapping some portion out of slate. There is no use of color in this art form. Polished slate would appear near black or dark gray in color and the carved, scrapping out portion would appear a little rough on surface and light gray in color. It’s phenomenal that the artisan still manages to bring out his imagination in a picture perfect way.