Cat's Eye Carving

Hand carved house signs and the Green man

This week has been one of finishing some hand carved Welsh slate commissions and finishing/starting some new stone carvings.

As a traditionally trained stonemason with a background in sculpture through school and at University I have a unique set of skills which give me the creativity of my art and the discipline of my stonemasonry. The connection between these two 3D art forms becomes apparent when I design my sculptures. This Green man takes his roots from the Bacchus God, I have used Grapes, vines and the vine leaves to create this beautiful creature and the finished carving could be as I have designed him to be supported by corbels, as a door or fireplace lintel or built into a wall. I drew the design 3 years ago and sometimes this is how long one of my carvings takes to come to fruition. I am using Portland limestone which is perfect for this detailed carving. 

The Green man with berries is a carving I started a few years ago and I decided to finish him this week as a practice to the Bacchus Green man. 

In order to lift the stone I had to employ my engine crane and I kept this piece of equipment out for use with my woodpecker for roughing out but also in case I needed to move my piece of stone again. It is great to have plenty of benches so I can be working on more than one carving at a time.

As you may be aware I have a good list of commissions on the go at the moment, all of them are hand carved but they are not all house signs, in this set of pictures I also have a Silver Wedding Anniversary present. This is taken from a pendant in the form of a Love Spoon. Both these commissions are drawn out to the customers specifications. The font for Soneck House and the Sun motif is lifted from my customers business livery and I worked hard to get it exactly right, it is finished with Gold leaf and black paint and finally I oiled the slate to give it a beautiful depth of colour and enhance the Gold leaf.