Where do you begin? Stone carving may seem mysterious, challenging, and expensive; well, it’s not. Of course, it can be, but I started carving for fun with a single mallet and three chisels, using reclaimed stone from my garden. Fast forward 30 years, and I have multiple mallets and dozens of chisels. Many have been Christmas and birthday gifts, and a significant number are secondhand.
If that’s the tools part sorted, how does someone actually start carving? Creativity is an innate part of human nature that can bring numerous health and wellbeing benefits. Alongside creativity, the desire to ‘make one’s mark’ seems to be ingrained in us. The trick with stone carving is simply to give it a try; it doesn’t have to be complicated, whether it’s scratching a pattern onto an old piece of slate or carving a simple image onto a piece of reclaimed stone. There’ll be a quiet satisfaction in knowing that you’ve created something with a sense of permanence that working with stone offers.
However, if you’re anything like me, it’s not quite enough to start a new hobby without some support, encouragement, or guidance. I have drawers full of paintbrushes from a short-lived foray into watercolors, and more than the odd wood carving chisel scattered around my workshop. For me, stone carving began as a romantic notion, but I was fortunate enough to receive lessons early on, and from that point I was hooked.
Throughout my earlier career in the community and environmental regeneration sectors, I always believed that most people could achieve far more than they initially thought they could . I consistently found this when teaching crafts like drystone walling or working on community artworks. With this in mind, I decided to start offering stone carving courses in 2025, and the experience in the first year only strengthened my belief that not only can stone carving be enjoyed by a wide range of people, but that its wellbeing benefits are real.
On our 2024 courses we were carving a Green Goddess, our version of the familiar traditional Green Man. Invariably on day one there were those who thought “I just can’t do it” but without out exception they could and by the end of day two they were leaving with a carving to be proud of and a sense of time well spent.
Perhaps you are simply looking for an escape from the stresses and strains of everyday life or seeking a physical outlet for your creative ideas or maybe just maybe your thinking of stone carving or stone masonry as a career; whatever your motivation why not give one a Lost in Stone Carving Course a go…Coming to a venue near you very soon.
Leave a Reply