Woodcarver known for specialty

PLAINS - How many people can say when they were a 10 year old they found a life passion that would bring them recognition throughout the United States even from the President? When Henry Larum, a typical adolescent who looked up to his older brother, was 10 years old, he found that passion.

Today, Larum is known throughout the country as a master wood and antler carver who has works in the possession of collectors and in the hands of descendants of President Gerald Ford.

“I started when I was about 10... My brother, he never did pursue it, but he could carve things and I was kind of impressed when I was nine or 10 years old and so I was trying... I had a pocketknife and I would make whistles and stuff like that, and it kept growing,” Larum said.

Larum kept progressing and when he reached junior high and high school, people would ask him if he could make a number of things or would commission him for works.

“I was just was just about in about in the junior high years and started to get a little bit of recognition, so I had people ask if I could carve this or that,” Larum said reminiscently.  

This continued mostly as a hobby for Larum until 1980, when the mill he worked at, Evan’s Supply Wood Mill, shut down and, in his words, “I went full time.”

As Larum gained even more recognition, he had various shows in Missoula and had work in the Russell Art Show, an art show that has showcased some of the most preeminent western style artists for 30 years.

Wood was Larum’s medium for many years, however in 1975, right before he began his full time carving career, Larum found a new medium, which would lead him down a very unique path, creatively.

“This guy had asked me if I had ever carved antlers and I hadn’t up until then, that was about 1975, and he brought me all of these bases (the base of an antler) and I started carving out belt buckles,” explained Larum.

Eventually, he started carving complex wilderness scenes into the antlers, ranging from different kinds of animals, to fur trappers leading fur trains of mules hauling loads. Larum would switch between using wood or antlers to create his scenes of sheep, moose, or various predators in their natural state.

Larum explained the difficulty of having to find the right type and piece of wood that would allow him to carve such intricate scenes, where he could work the vertical and horizontal grains of the wood together to create multi-item structures of moose walking amongst trees or a fur trader leading his hunting train of mules. When working in wood, much of his work requires him to make multiple items separately and then place them together into a scene, but he said his last train was made out of one piece of wood.

One such piece that gained him notoriety involved an eagle attacking a kid goat while the mother goat defends its young from the eagle.

Steve Ford, President Ford’s son, who worked one summer on a ranch in Lolo, had heard of Larum’s work and became interested and wanted to meet Larum. The foreman of the ranch introduced the two men and Ford commissioned with him for a piece of work, which he would give to his father for Christmas. The eagle attacking the goats was that piece, the one that would become President Ford’s present.

“I got a nice call from the President Christmas morning... It was crazy,” Larum said jokingly.

Larum became very popular and well known after having one of his works become a present for the President, and his business took off.

Larum has always called Plains home and now lives part time in Lolo in a small cabin off of Blackjack Road, where he still continues his work in a small shed. He continues to make carvings, usually of animals and belt buckles with animals carved into them. He says he is partially retired, explaining that he works full time, but has slowed down because his work takes him a long time to complete. At the moment, he is working on some belt buckles, has just finished a moose and is working on a wolf.