Bristol’s Festival of Stone, which started on 31 May and ended on 9 June, has given the city a lasting legacy of a Bath stone depiction of James Starley, inventor of the penny-farthing and the father of the bicycle industry in the UK.

It will also have the prolonged loan of Monolith II, a sculpture by Royal Academician John Maine commissioned by Sun Life Assurance with assistance from the Arts Council in 1980. It was to be removed afterwards, but will now remain on public view in Bristol until the autumn.

The sculpture of James Starley, called Emergence, which was the theme of the Festival, was carved by Ben Dearnley (with a contribution from comedian Ross Noble when he visited the Festival). It will be positioned on the Sustrans cycle route through Bristol’s Ashton Court Park.

Ben had asked for a 2.5tonne block of Bath stone on bed to work. When he arrived at the Festival he found a 5tonne block stood on end and wondered what he was going to do with it. He looked at a picture of James Starley and then discarded it – “it’s impossible to produce a portrait of this size in this amount of time,” he says. Instead he produced a stylised likeness with a bit of a twist to give it an enquiring look.

The force behind the Festival was Bristol architect Mike Richards, whose inspiration for it came two years ago while he was on holiday in France. He saw Laurent Donnadieu turn stonemasonry and carving into a public performance by carving stone, putting the elements back together as a block, then publicly exposing the sculpture inside the reformed block by dismantling it again. He calls the performance Une Grûte Fur Rûte and presented it during the Festival of Stone in Bristol using two 5tonne blocks of Bath stone.

In fact, the start of the final performance and the subsequent dinner to present the prizes as the finale of the Festival were delayed somewhat because the quality of the carvings produced during the event was so high that the judges were at loggerheads for an hour-and-a-half about which piece should get the Festival Award.

Peter Randell-Page, John Maine, Ben Dearnley, Trevor Dring (of Bristol stone company Phidias) and Elaine Marson (of Bath Stone Group, which supplied all the stone for the event) eventually agreed the Award should go to Patrick Way for his piece inspired by the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. Patrick, a stonemason and carver who lives near Glastonbury, told NSS he had never actually visited the Giant’s Causeway but liked the idea of the hexagonal uniformity of the geological feature.

Sam Flintham, Pippa Unwin and Tania Ivanova Tzanova (from Bulgaria) were commended for their work. Pippa Unwin’s crocodile with hatching young was the piece chosen by the other carvers as their favourite and the People’s Choice, voted for by the 20,000 visitors who came to see the event – twice as many as had been expected – was Micky Carpenter’s turtle breaking free of its egg.

Mike Richards was still recovering after the event and felt it was too early to commit to staging another next year. But there was widespread approbation for this year’s Festival so the pressure will be on to repeat it.