Cat's Eye Carving

The King’s visit.

I was honoured to have been invited to meet the King at Walmer Castle in recognition of my carving of the Compass rose.

It was an incredibly hot day and just a week on from a reception at No. 11 Downing Street.

There was such an abundance of beautiful flowers and the dragonflies were busy over the pond.

The Queen Mother’s garden looked lovely, each town had a banner that we stood beside to welcome the King.

When I was at Goodnestone Primary school, about 40 years ago, the Queen Mother was the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and we welcomed her to Goodnestone as a guest of Lord Fitzwalter, it was lovely to be part of the King’s visit and meet the current Lord Warden, Sir George Zambellas.

Here I am with the Mayor and is wife Emmet and Illeyn Csuka, our town clerk, Gill and one of the trustees of the Sandwich Medieval Centre, Steve Barlett.

Sadly the only photo of me with the King is just the back of my head, but I love this one of Gill shaking the King’s hand. Photos By K T Bruce.

What a fantastic day.

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Barfrestone Church.

Barfreston St Nicholas | National Churches Trust

I highly recommend a visit to this magnificent Church, I have seen Kilpeck in Herefordshire and this one stands up to it.

Kilpeck Church | The Church of St Mary and St David, Herefordshire

Here are four sketches that I am going to use for inspiration for my next carving.

I have a lot of letter cutting on my current schedule, so it’s always good to have a side quest to stretch my creative muscles.

I have a beautiful piece of Caen stone to reproduce this in, I am so excited to be using the same stone that this was originally carved out of.

This piece of stone is 10 x 10 x 12 inches and I will be working on it in between my commissions.

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Repairs.

I have had some interesting commissions to repair sculptures. Here are some of the results.

This Ball finial came to me in two pieces with the stainless steel bar still set in place. I cleaned it up, and joined it back together using special stone glue and lime mortar, finishing off with a lime based shleter coat.

This Chinese rider was brought to me with the tips of the Horses ears broken off. I repaired them with a specialist stone glue and mixed stone dust to match the colour.

It’s so satisfying to make something broken and sad, whole again.

I repaired some chips and a corner on a marble wash stand, it was originally joined together with iron rods, these have since rusted. Obviously as a wash stand, there is going to be water. My customer has asked me to disguise the rust staining, I’ll let you know how I get on.

I am still working on a repair to a damaged commemorative plaque to a war hero, I’ll let you know when that one is ready.

If you have something that you would like repaired, please feel free to get in touch and I’ll see what I can do.

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The Compass Rose.

You’ll be pleased to hear that the Compass Rose is now complete. Due to frosts after it was put in in March, the resin on the coat of arms failed and I had to remove it, this took some of the stone away and I needed to carve a replacement. In order to make the surface non-slip, I was advised to use a light dusting of clean dry play-pit sand, when this was wet, it looked fine, but over the several weeks that it took the resin to fail, the surface became dirty and horrible. This ruined the overall look of the carving.
In a way I was given a second chance, I decided to carve the replacement using an incised line, a v-cut around the edge of the coat of arms. I wanted to make the carving the best I could, but it wasn’t appropriate for the installation.

I am looking forward to what the next few months has in store, I’ll keep you up to date.

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Update.

Hi everyone, what a tumultuous first half of the year. I am still recovering from my broken ankle, I have tendon damage which I am seeing a physio therapist about. I am doing my exercises and getting stronger everyday.

The Bronchitis hit me like a ton of bricks and I am glad to say that that is behind me.

I am ready to replace the coat of arms in the compass rose, due to the resin failure, I had to carve a replacement. I decided to do this in shallow relief so I could remove the need to level it and make it non-slip.

I am only a little behind on my commissions. I am currently drawing out a memorial on a large piece of Portland limestone. It will have the Royal Welsh Fusiliers cap badge carved in shallow relief.

I have a memorial plaque to repair, that will be placed back in position, next to St Peter’s Church in Sandwich, as soon as it’s ready.

Due to my injury, I haven’t been able to get up to Founders Hall yet to carry out the letter cutting of last year’s Master. I hope to do this next month.

I didn’t win the small business award, I was pipped to the post by a website designer. I am looking forward to putting together my application for the Duke of Gloucester’s stonemasonry award.

Finally, after 10 years and 252,000 miles, my trusty work horse has gone to the great scrapyard in the sky. I hope that my new vehicle, a Fiat Doblo, will last as long.

I’ll put some photos in my next post.

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