Levi Fisher Ames Education Resources

Levi Fisher Ames was born in Pennsylvania in 1840, and his family moved to Wisconsin when he was a young child. After fighting in the Union Army during the Civil War, Ames returned to Wisconsin to raise a family. He learned wood-carving skills during the war. Using these skills, Ames made and repaired wooden musical instruments and carved several hundred wooden animals over the years. In the 1890s, Ames took a selection of his imaginative carved menagerie, which he displayed in hinged shadow boxes, on a regional tent tour as the L.F. Ames Museum of Art.

Ames’s wooden beasts and bugs, carved from life and his imagination, were passed down through his family. The works were given to Kohler Foundation, Inc., in 2001 to be conserved and gifted to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center after their conservation.