What a great weekend it was on 21-23 June for the 134 carvers from 12 countries at, and the thousands of visitors to the European Stone Festival.

This annual event is held at a different European town or city each year and this year it was the turn of Lincoln.

The event is overseen by Freiburg Technical College in Germany, each year working in conjunction with the organisers from the city or town involved. The German College's partner this year was the Works Department at Lincoln Cathedral, headed by the Clerk of Works, Carol Heidschuster. Lincoln Cathedral is one of the nine in England that still employs its own stonemasons. Together, the cathedral masons form the Carthedral Workshop Fellowship. 

The work produced during the weekend was of exceptional quality, as you can see from the video above. At the end of the event, when all the work was auctioned off, the bidding for some of it topped £2,000 and on many of the items it went above £1,000. All the money raised goes to the Cathedral.

There will be a four-page report from the event in the July issue of Natural Stone Specialist.