Master carousel carver and restorationist Todd Goings of Carousel and Carvings in Marion, Ohio has worked for 35 years to keep the art of American carved wooden carousels alive. Built in a handful of master artisan workshops from the 1880s to the 1930s, wooden carousels are participatory folk-art environments that set whimsical carved animals to music and movement in custom-built mechanical frames. Of America’s several-thousand original wooden carousels, just 150 remain. Goings has worked on many of them, and, along the way, has revived the American carousel workshop for a new century.
