The woodworker pulled the brim of his hat low, grabbed an X-Acto knife, and began gently chipping and slicing thin layers of wood from a piece he had been working on for months. This one was a map of Africa, and in the center, there was a heart.

Adiante Franszoon, 80, opened his Waverly workshop in 2013, and little has changed since. He still etches ornate patterns into wood with his simple knife, working as if an audience were gathered to watch. It’s an art form traditional to his native Suriname.

His work has been displayed at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and, currently, at the International African American Museum in South Carolina. Woodcarving is a centuries-old tradition in Franszoon’s family. His father, brothers and uncles all carved.

“My generation, everyone can carve,” he said.

Franszoon was raised in the Saamaka Maroon tribe, a community founded by his ancestors, who were formerly enslaved Africans in Suriname, a country in South America. Many rebelled and escaped into the Amazon rainforest. He said hand-carving became a way of life for them — and, later, for him, too.

Franszoon was 10 when he learned the skill of carving from his father, whose hands worked rapidly. He quickly caught up. His first creation was a 15-foot dugout canoe that carried him across the Suriname River, which wrapped around his village.

“When I want to go fishing, I take my own canoe,” Franszoon said. “I didn’t have to sit with my father in his canoe anymore. I could go ahead of him.”

Franszoon said he moved to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1968, and then to Baltimore in 1975 to study economics at the University of Baltimore.

In Franszoon’s childhood community, carving was a form of competition. A test of mastery. People carved everything from furniture to doorways to boats. Everyone’s style was unique, and neighbors would stand for hours studying a piece, trying to figure out how it was made, he said.

“Everyone lived in houses they had built themselves, using wood from trees felled by men with axes,” said Richard Price, an anthropologist who has extensively studied the Saamaka Maroons of Suriname. “The men carved in wood, making stools, peanut-grinding boards, laundry beaters, pestles. This art is widely considered among the greatest artistic achievements of people in the African diaspora.”

Gesturing to items around his workshop — a side table, large foldable chairs, earrings, a cutting board, picture frames and a wooden mirror — Franzoon said, “You see all this? I made them ... Even when I’m frustrated, I carve.”

He sells his pieces on Etsy, ranging from $35 for a cutting board to $2,250 for a table with elaborate designs. He frequently attends craft shows, including in Fells Point and White Marsh.

Franszoon said he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He said it’s more of a go-with-the-flow approach — nothing fancy, letting ideas for intricate details emerge as he carves.

On a recent afternoon in his shop, Franszoon chipped at the wood, whistling and blowing away tiny pieces. He lost a finger while working in construction, but that hasn’t slowed his agile hands.

Soon, textured ridges that looked like toppling dominoes formed around the edge of the African map.

The president of Burkina Faso had inspired him to create the piece, he said, because of the leader’s utmost love and dedication for the country. He was weighing whether to keep the heart or cut it out with his jigsaw.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do here, so I leave it alone for the time being,” he said, pausing work on the heart and designing around it. “Eventually, I have to figure it out, but for now, I do what I know.”

“If I cannot get away with it, I flip it over to the backside and see what I will come up with. It’s tedious work,” he said.

Franszoon often becomes confused because the pattern he meticulously carves can turn into a maze.

“I won’t know where to carve anymore,” he said. “I sand it and start all over again.”

Wood, his canvas, is precious to him. He sources exotic woods, which he said can be expensive, from woodworking supply shops in Timonium and Pennsylvania.

He brings a hand planer to every wood shop, explaining that it’s used to smooth the surface so the wood’s true color shows. He works with wood in its natural state rather than staining it with artificial color.

“I like the work of Mother Nature,” Franszoon said. “Let the wood be itself.”

He usually opts for Mahogany, tropical cedar, Peruvian walnut, maple or teak. In many pieces, he combines different woods and joins them using wooden blocks, a method he said his ancestors used long before screws existed.

“It will never come apart,” he said.

When Franszoon isn’t designing based on his ideas, he works from his customers’ preferences and requests. Though these days, he said, customers are hard to come by. At the end of each piece, he applies a clear finishing coat or walnut oil mixed with sesame oil to bring out the wood’s rich color.

Franszoon said he can’t say how long it takes to create a piece because he doesn’t like to rush. He works until he’s satisfied and never begins a new project until finishing the current one.

Of his creations, his most purchased piece, and one that has been exhibited in museums, is “The Circle of Life.” Its geometric and circular patterns seem to have no end.

“My ancestors’ work hasn’t died yet, because I came around, and I learned it,” Franszoon said. He didn’t pass the craft to his children, so he may be the last carver in his family.

For now, he said, “I’m doing it in my own style. My ancestors pat me on my back, and say, ‘Go, boy.’”