Old church of Petäjävesi: The art of the wood

When we request the services of a master carpenter, ¿is Not always to fix some damages of the furniture or some articles of wood that have in our house? Or –I doubt it completely- ¿they Request an expert in carpentry so that concoct them a masterpiece of the carved and the architecture? Simply it do not we do because do not we believe capable to a worker of the wood to do something that do not be to hammer, to nail or to grease adhesive to rough objects as tables, movable, chairs or any object of this material related to the purest humility of resources.

In Finland, a master carpenter concocted and he did one of the largest samples of the carved in wood of the entire world and of every time, is the Old Church of Petäjävesi. The teacher –And not only of carpentry but a natural artist- that built this monument of the Lutheran religion of the s XVIII, someone he went by name practically unpronounceable, but we can do the effort to compensate for which contributed to the culture and European north architecture, to Scandinavia, is Jaakko Klementinpoika Leppänen.

Its construction was carried out between 1763 and 1765, but was finished by the son of the author, Erkki, in 1821, who added a bell tower with the same style of the one that the main base was concocted, all of pine, which justifies that the time have done very little damage to its structure. The pine and its artistic breeze do not yield in their eternal intent to be done for the enjoyment of the lovers of the eccentric art, sacrificed and, above all, old.

The Old Church of Petäjävesi is flanked by a harmonious natural landscape, a short lawn and trees of thin trunk, besides a lake –Characteristic of the churches of the old one Scandinavia- that qualifies the natural image of all the environment, like allegory to that the religious faith is part of the forces of the nature. A scandinavian temple always is found among a natural landscape in response to that allegory.

Its interiors are a lot better worked that its external image, which not freckle of gullible, therefore enjoys a beautiful one rusticidad not alien to the contemplation amazed. Vaults, pulpits and sculptures offer what always seeks a tourist lover of the art, of different brown and gray tones, I repeat, all concocted with pine as to assure his perpetuation to the step of the years.