I was given David Esterly's 'The Lost Carving' for Christmas and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Esterly was an american woodcarver who developed a fascination for the work of Grinling Gibbons and helped with the restoration of Gibbons' carvings that were damaged in the fire at Hampton Court. Esterly writes very well about the relationship between mind and body in craft work, how a carving starts with the carver as god, determining how things will be but gradually shifts until the wood begins to tell the carver what needs to be done to complete the essential last 10% of refinement and the carver ultimately becomes a slave tot he demands of the carving.
There is a thread on the forum started after Esterly died in 2019 and that contains links to various videos about him and his work. David Esterly, 1944 - 2019
I was particularly interested in his discovery that Gibbons used 'Dutch rush' as an abrasive for finishing parts of his carvings (this was before the invention of sandpaper).