carved celtic cross

I was asked to make a carved celtic cross by Miss Julie~Anne Macqueen. It was to be a headstone for her great friend Kathrine Judith Hines.
I wanted to give the piece an arts and crafts feel to it, and although I used some celtic knotwork, I wanted the design to be original and contemporary. I knew right away that it would look elegant and appear stable if it was tapered.
Scott Bailey at Moray Stone Cutters supplied me with a huge wedge of pink clasach, weighing about a tonne and a quarter. The pink stone turns out to be even tougher than the yellow type, so it really has taken a lot of work to make.
Marc, my apprentice, set to work slowly roughing out the form of the cross and halo, sawing slots into the unwanted parts and breaking off the bits with a hammer and chisel. In this way two thirds of the mass of the stone was bagged up and thrown away. Then the outline of the finished piece had to be chiseled in. I have never been a fan of using grinders to form surfaces. The only way to get an accurate flat is to chisel it on, checking it and straightening it out as you go. Grinder formed surfaces are very smooth but not exactly flat and have a soft, dead appearance. A sharp arris can only be achieved with a sharp chisel. Nothing looks nearly as good as a neatly dressed surface.
Next the parallel faces of the 'halo' had to be cut in to contrast with and accentuate the taper of the cross. This was designed to carry a radiating pattern, so it was only the edges that were chiseled in and the rest is left carefully but roughly dressed with a point.
Time to employ a machine. I hired a hole saw and Marc stood for nearly two whole days and cored the four holes that create the crossing.
Next the knotwork on the sides was added. I had taught Marc how to do simple knotwork in the summer so he could knock out some bits for our 3 Harbours Arts Festival open workshop. I chose an obscure form for the sides of the trunk where we had some room, and a simple knot for the arms.
Because only the edges were dressed in by hand the middle was a bit proud, the knotwork sits up off the background and looks chunky and district.
I wanted to do a tree of life on the face, a motif I believe appropriate for a headstone. I drew up a sketch for discussion, with two trees meeting and separating into the arms of the cross, with two birds perched on them in the top part. The birds, with entwined necks and head feathers, is a design lifted from the Book of Kells, and in my take on it they are heron, one of the Celts' beasts of wisdom.
Miss Macqueen liked the idea, but not the leaf form I had sketched, which was based on the scottish mediaeval square form as found at Roslyn chapel and St. Giles cathedral. Around this time I went to the Arts & Crafts exhibition Hand, Heart & Soul at the City Arts Centre, Edinburgh. Although it is not literally based on anything I saw there the next leaf form I drew up insinuated itself to me as a result of that experience.
I had intended to carve the face myself, and to get Marc to simply block out the sunk sections for me. He was impressed with my design and when we had it marked on, so he could rough it out, he cunningly asked if he could do a sample section. We often do a practice on a scrap of stone to try out an idea before committing to the job itself, and I was delighted, not only that he wanted to try to do the carving, but also had sussed what the next step would be. I described what I had in mind, he did one of the larger foliage units, we discussed it and he did another smaller one, better.
Then I let him loose on the finished item, and a fine job he made of it too.
Funnily enough, even although I hadn’t taken a chisel to it at this point, I felt it belonged to me or that I had created it just as much as if I had stood and knocked it out myself. I believe this represents a landmark in my development as a tradesman, an artist/ artisan and designer. A maturity I have been working towards without realising it for twenty years. Teaching someone the skills,then setting them to work for you is a bit like having an extra pair of hands.
Standing back from the finished piece, the design, particularly at the crossing, has a very Pictish look about it. The picts loved spiral ornamentation, looser and less regimented than the celtic knotwork. This was unintentional, but is definitely there.
The letter form is one I had visualised, but not yet developed for the scroll of Columbas' scribe, my first statue (unfinished).