Stone Carving and Letter Cutting
For the last 3 mths I have been working out of a small marquee at Taurus Crafts in Lydney, well I am pleased to announce I have finally moved into my permanent workshop.
I am situated in the walled garden courtyard with 2 other shops next to me, Undy Yarns and Gallium Garden Design.
My sculpture is on display and for sale in my workshop, and as always I undertake all types of stone carving commissions!
I look forward to seeing you soon!
Well another exhilerating weekend has come and gone!!
Stonemasons descended on this beautiful example of a Medieval town to carve an unknown stone in order to help raise money for St Laurences Church in Ludlow.
We were given the choice of two sizes of local sandstone from a quarry near Shrewsbury-it was incredibly abrasive and quite crumbly, but so many beautiful carvings were created.
Saturday morning we all made a good start at 8am, stone was flying as we all knew that we had less than 2 days to show off our skills and create something worthy of selling in the auction!
I was unsure as to what I was going to carve as I had designed something for the alternative size stone, so I took my inspiration from what I had seen and experienced in the journey up, stopping at Kilpeck Church and Hereford Cathedral then having the chance to see some of the magnificent carvings on the local buildings!
So many interested members of the public eager to find out how we trained, where we worked and what we were carving, the sound of our fellow craftsmen chipping away and the traditional sound of Mediaval music spurred us on, but the day flew by and before we knew it the day was over and we were enjoying a lovely evening with good food, good company-and obviously good local beer from The Ludlow Brewery!!
Sunday morning is always hard as we know that we have to finish by 3pm, I had an early night and made a good start at 8am! We had lots more visitors as the doors opened to the public including the Mayor and local dignitries-all looking forward to seeing how we were progressing!
I am happy to say that we all finished in time and the standard was so high!
There were lots of interesting side stalls including a Blacksmith demonstration, traditional craft skills, childrens activities and historic talks and walks!
From the sale of the carvings approximately £4300 was raised to help restore part of this beautiful Church!
See you at the next one!
Really looking forward to this event on the 21st and 22nd May, for more information please visit
http://www.stlaurences.org.uk/ludlow-conservation-weekend
This promises to be a very exciting weekend with many interesting events talks and walk as well as the opportunities to watch professional stonemasons at work, at the end you will have the opportunity to bid on your favourite carving and help raise money for the restoration of St Laurences Church!!
Thank-you to everyone who came and supported me at this years event!
My carving from last year raised £120 for The Pied Piper Appeal and Gloucester Cathedral. The auction was drawn on the Saturday and the lucky winners were very proud to win my Gargoyle!
Over the whole weekend I carved a Green Man in a piece of Fish-Hill limestone, very hard and shelly!!
Saturday saw a rather cloudy day, but people came out to enjoy all the fair had to offer. I was able to get on with my carving very well and set myself up to finish him on the Sunday. Deadline was 4pm on Sunday when the raffle was drawn for this years carving.
Sunday brought sunshine and plenty of people, I was able to wheel my banker outside and carve in full few of everyone! We managed to raise £232 for the charities from the sale of raffle tickets for my Green Man, and the lady who won him was incredibly excited-especially as his Great Grandfather was a stonemason!
I am very proud of my carving and as with all my pieces I will miss him!!!
I will not be in today, Tuesday 3rd May.
As you can imagine, working over Bank Holiday weekends is incredibly tiring and when you factor in that I spend each day carving I find it necessary to sprinkle in some days off!!!!
I will be back in tomorrow, I have some Forest of Dean sandstone arriving for a commission-3 Grotesques for a house that my customer is building, how cool!!
Obviously the big question is the stone for the Angels that I have been commissioned to carve as part of a memorial-lets just say I’m still working on that one.
I have been busy carving birdbaths, gargoyles, grotesques and the green man, so please check out my gallery for new images!
Hopefully I will see some of you at Highnam Court Spring Fair this weekend, The 7th and 8th May. I will be carving a Green Man and my prize winning carving from last years event will be in the raffle, so for a raffle ticket he could be yours!
Please visit www.highnamcourtspringfair.co.uk
for more information.
Here are the photos of my carving from last year!
