Hand Carved Bath Stone Miners

Carved from a 30cm x 30cm x 40cm block

This piece was hand carved from stone donated by Lovell Stone of Hartham Park Quarry to show off the quality of their Bath Stone. This, along with 3 others, was exhibited at the London ExCel Centre Stone Show in 2017.

The brief was “Think Bath, Think Stone”

My aim was to try and tell the story of stone mining past and present

Sale Price £1,500 (Plus shipping)

First I measured approximately a 50% size block of clay. I wanted to make the largest piece I could so decided to work the piece on the diagonal.

Next, I very quickly roughed out the basic shape of the figure I want to end up with.

At this stage, I looked at my source images and start adding the detail. I wanted the miners to have the same face, with a change in time.

Using a cheese wire, I cut the heads down the middle and scooped out the inside and left it to dry.

I don’t always send the maquette off for firing, but in this case I thought I would.

To try and get the proportions into my head I played around with another piece of clay. You can see the original maquette in the background from which I took all the measurements.

Having marked up where all the high-points are, I started to cut away the stone I didn’t need

I didn’t need to wear the hard hat, I was looking at it for research …. honest.

I now have to leave enough stone for the lamp on the modern miner’s helmet and the mustache of the ancient one.

I could not put this moment off any longer. It was time to separate the chaps. Very nerve wracking.

Taking it slowly and cutting from both directions using a brand new saw they came apart very cleanly.

Bath Stone is very soft so you have to be careful with detailed items making sure they are not left too thin, but I wanted to show what this stone can do and this pipe was as thin as I dared go.

I felt that they should be placed looking at each other as if in conversation.

Now all cleaned up, both them and me.

I decided to make a mould of the maquette and cast it in Jesmonite-Bathstone mix. These sell for £45 each or £80 for the pair.