Tag: Stone Carving
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When Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Ozymandias in 1817, he was captivated by the news of a massive fragment of a statue of Ramesses II arriving at the British Museum. The poem he produced is perhaps the most famous meditation on the transience of power, yet for those who work with stone, the most compelling figure…
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In the lineage of a creative life, there is often a single point of departure that defines the horizon. For me, that moment arrived over twenty years ago with my fourth masterpiece. It was a physical interrogation of Jacques Brel’s 1959 recording of “Ne me quitte pas,” rendered in marble. It represented a seismic shift…
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My grandad was, for all intents and purposes, my dad. A proud Lancastrian with a formidable work ethic, he was a man of quiet discipline. Having served as a Grenadier Guardsman during the war, he carried that military precision with him for the rest of his life. He did not drink or gamble; his only…
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In the tradition of the traveling Court Masters of the Renaissance, my career has been defined by a nomadic devotion to stone. To understand the soul of a cathedral or the strength of a fortress, one must not only touch the stone but walk the land from which it sprang. The Alpine Descent My journey…
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A Lineage Forged in Picardy In the late 1980s, my journey as a carver was anchored in the soil of the Somme and the historic regions of Picardy. To work on Amiens Cathedral is to be humbled; it is the largest Gothic structure in France, a vessel of “lacy stone” where I spent my days…
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When one walks through the hushed corridors of the Ashmolean Museum, the eye is naturally drawn to the masterpieces on canvas. Yet, for a carver, the true revelation often lies at the periphery. There is a particular frame within those walls—carved by the incomparable Grinling Gibbons—that serves as a silent testament to a level of…
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As a child in the aftermath of the Second World War, my world was defined by the jagged geometry of the City’s bomb sites. To most, these were merely ruins; to me, they were my first playgrounds. I climbed through the exposed foundations and scorched timbers of a London that had stood since the Great…
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The Riddle of the Long Road: A Master’s Secret to Time. The Legend of the Interval “Shorten the road for me,” the legendary Master, Goban Saor, told his son as they began a gruelling journey. The son was confused; the distance was fixed, the path was steep. But the Master knew a secret: The road…