Most companies summarize their reviews. We decided to count ours instead. Carved has 33,774 reviews on file, averaging 4.9 stars, and laid end to end they come to 1,042,577 words about wood, resin, and the people who carry both. Somewhere in that pile is every claim we could ever want to make, written by people with no particular reason to flatter us.
So we ran the count. Ten words, tallied by machine across the text of every review: whole words only, any capitalization, one tally per review no matter how many times the word repeats. The list runs from rarest to most common. The numbers were exact on the day we counted them, and they drift upward every time a new review arrives.
1. Museum: 3 reviews
The rarest word on the list. Of 33,774 reviews, exactly three reach for museum, and none of them uses it loosely: one says the case should sit under a museum light so you can see the grain and the shades of resin, one calls the thing “a portable art museum”, and the third turned a question at a bar into a referral.
Someone at my bar asked about my phone case and said they wanted one. I told them each case is one of a kind. Gave them the link to Carved so they could choose their own unique piece. Museum-quality phone cases.
2. Tattoo: 6 reviews
Six reviews contain tattoo or tattoos. One of the six means the tech tattoo that rides along in the box as a small extra gift. The other five connect a one-of-one case to their ink: four matched a case to a tattoo, and one buys cases for the same reason they get tattooed. Either way the word compresses the whole pitch: permanent, deliberate, and on nobody else.
I am thrilled I found this amazing case! One of a kind and just my style. It even matches my tattoo! Plus, the added bonus of supporting an artistic small business.
3. Smell: 31 reviews
The word smell, exactly, appears in 31 reviews; let it conjugate into smells, smelled and smelling and the count reaches 49. Most of them mean the wood. A few mean the workshop instead: one four-star owner logged “a weird chemical smell but I’m sure that’ll probably fade over time”, which is about what you would expect from resin that recently left Indiana. The five-star below manages to use two other words from this list while it is at it.
Love this case! I really like the feel of the wood and the smell… everyone needs a unique second case.
4. Shimmer: 55 reviews
Shimmer shows up in 55 reviews as the bare word, 91 if you allow shimmers, shimmery and shimmering. It is the thing resin does in sunlight that a product photo cannot, which makes this the list's politest recurring complaint: the case keeps outperforming its own picture.
Looks even better in real life than in the site pictures. The resin features really shimmer in the light.
5. Conversation: 143 reviews
143 reviews contain conversation or conversations, and the corpus splits the idiom almost exactly down the middle: conversation starter appears in 55 reviews, conversation piece in 57. Nobody buys a phone case, or a charger, expecting small talk. The talking happens anyway.
This charger is such a conversation starter. I just love it and it is even better in person!
6. Solid: 426 reviews
Handmade goods carry a standing suspicion of fragility. Solid, in 426 reviews, is the corpus's rebuttal, and owners apply it to specifics: to buttons, to wallets, to the flip of a pocket knife. It is the least romantic word on the list, which is exactly why it earns a spot.
Loved unboxing the knife. Beautifully crafted and light weight! I didn’t want to use it for the first week lol. It’s a work of art and solid pocket knife (once I got over the honeymoon phase).
7. Compliment: 1,218 reviews
Counting the singular and the plural, compliment appears in 1,218 reviews, which works out to roughly one review in every twenty-eight being partly a report on what a third party said. We never asked anyone to log their compliments. They do it anyway; the one below is filing on behalf of a husband.
So unique and well made. My husband receives compliments on it all the time! Thank you for offering such a one of a kind bracelet.
8. Second: 1,688 reviews
The expensive word. 1,688 reviews contain second, and in 1,102 of them it sits directly in front of case, one or Carved. A case cut for one phone cannot follow you to the next, so owners solve the problem the obvious way. Each review tallies once here, however many seconds it manages; the one below manages two.
My second purchase and I’m just as thrilled with my second as I was with my first. Had to buy new one only because I got a new phone!
9. Art: 1,925 reviews
Art is three letters, so we counted it strictly on word boundaries; smart, start and cart did not inflate the number. 1,925 reviews use it, and not only about the cases. The one below applies it to an object whose day job is holding credit cards.
I really like the wallet. It holds all my cards and keeps them organized. Thank you for a beautiful piece of art.
10. Unique: 3,887 reviews
The summit. Unique appears in 3,887 reviews, which is 11.5 percent of everything customers have ever written about us. It is also the word we use about ourselves, so discount it however you see fit; the reviews supply their own corroboration, with the phrase one of a kind appearing in 1,419 reviews when counted separately.
Even the complaints use it. One of the corpus's 86 one-star reviews reads, in full, “I thought it was going to be unique and one of a kind but when I saw my case compared to the listing it was the exact same thing”. That is a complaint that the case looked exactly like its own photograph, which is, for the record, the deal: every photo on the site is of the exact piece that ships.
This is my second carved iPhone case. I love them because they are beautiful, durable and unique! Thanks for a great product.
That is the count. The word we left off is beautiful, which appears in 10,167 reviews and is therefore less a finding than a baseline. The ten above are what people reach for when beautiful is not specific enough, and every one of them was written about a piece that existed exactly once. The ones below still do.
