Four award-winning, traditionally trained stonemasons and carvers have established a studio together in London. NSS paid them a visit.

After two winters working al fresco from sheds at the Bussey Building arts and culture centre in Peckham, the four stone workers who comprise London Stone Carving are looking forward to spending the winter ahead in the comfort of their new studio in Ossery Road, SE1.

They hope to turn the building into an artistic centre of their own with various skills represented. That has already begun in a small way with Sam’s wife, a wood carver, also having moved in to the building.

The four men are Tom Brown, Josh Locksmith, Thomas Nicholls and Sam Lee. They work together as a co-operative, aware that the combination of their considerable talents add up to more than the sum of the parts. Together, they have a pool of knowledge that can be used to help each other even though they all gain and work on their own commissions as well as being willing to work collaboratively on larger commissions or contracts as necessary.

A current example of that collaboration is at Victorian architect Sir John Soane’s Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, where Tom Brown and Thomas Nicholls are just about to begin a pair of ornamental rose carvings in Portland stone. Their model in clay re-works a recurring rose motif in much of Sir John’s architectural work. The finished stone carvings will be installed above the main entrance at the manor.

London Stone Carving is already on Westminster Council’s approved list of suppliers, having worked for the council to produce a plinth for the statue of Charlie Chaplin in Leicester Square, London.

Individually, each of the four stoneworkers has an impressive CV of study, work and awards. But when they are combined, they hope it will make London Stone Carving an even more attractive proposition for private and public sector clients looking for conservation carving, architectural masonry, lettering and sculptural work than any of them would be on their own.

Tom, Thomas and Sam all learnt their masonry skills at Weymouth College. Josh studied sculpture at Camberwell College of Art, discovering his aptitude for expressing his sculptural talent in stone while studying at the prestigious Complutense University in Madrid.

All four of them furthered their studies at that pinnacle of architectural, historical and sculptural stonework study, City & Guilds of London Art School. Josh Lockwood was presented with overall ‘best graduate’ award last year. Tom and Thomas both gained scholarships from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust and Thomas Nicholls and Josh Locksmith are Yeomen of the Masons Livery Company, which they praise for the support it has given them and for the work it does, often behind the scenes, to champion the stone industry.

The list of honours and awards of Tom, Thomas, Sam and Josh is extensive. But it is not enough just to have the talents, you also have to let people know you have them, and working together enables them to promote themselves more effectively than they could on their own, not least, of course, through the London Stone Carving website, which tops the Google list if you search the name.

London Stone Carving receives plenty of its own commissions directly from clients but is also happy to sub-contract on specialist carving, sculptural, lettering and artistic architectural masonry projects for other stonemasons and contractors, in London and further afield. If you are looking  for the skills they offer, they would be happy to hear from you.

When NSS visited London Stone Carving a large block of Portland limestone dominated one side of the workshop. It was being used as a table by Tom Brown for the production of a clay finial to be used to make a mould for casting Roman cement. This was for the renovation of a gothic revival house at Gunnersbury Park led by English Heritage. The original finials are cast Roman cement, which is why the replacements are being made that way.

Tom has since turned the block of Portland basebed limestone he was working on into a carving of a lion for a private client. It is a replica of a lion outside Leeds Town Hall. In his youth, the client who commissioned it had passed by it everyday on his way to school. Having subsequently done well for himself, he now wanted his own version of it at his home.

Sam was putting the finishing touches to a new Carrara Marble finger for a statue of Shakespeare. He had the arm of the statue that he was fitting it on to. It had been repaired previously some years ago by someone else but the repair had become detached and the work needed doing again.

Thomas was working on a maquette for a memorial marking the 150th anniversary of the Barnardo’s children’s charity. The finished memorial would be twice the size of the maquette and carved in Portland stone. It was due to be installed in a cemetery in Tower Hamlets in September.

Thomas explained that the commission to produce the memorial was fairly open ended, the charity simply wanting a sculpture encapsulating its overall ethos, but leaving it up to Thomas how he interpreted that aim. After researching the charity, he came up with the idea of hands releasing a cockney sparrow bird, because that is what the children were known as 150 years ago.

And Josh had been given a bursary to produce garden sculpture for the On Form exhibition of garden stone statuary at Rosie Pearson’s Asthall Manor in Burford, Oxfordshire (see the July/August issue of NSS).

It was while Josh was studying at City & Guilds of London Art School last year that a representative of On Form visited. There is considerable competition to be included in the On Form exhibition because it attracts a lot of clients and commissioners of garden sculpture. The work of some of the best known contemporary sculptors (Peter Randall-Page and Paul Vanstone, for example) is at the exhibition.

Josh was inspired by pictures of viruses. “They look like pieces of architectural stonework,” he said. He was finishing off his final contribution to the exhibition in Carrara marble. He was also working on a conch shell garden ornament in a green stone he had bought from a reclamation yard. It was also destined to be installed last month (September).