The Lost Carving

Authors: David Esterly & Jenny Uglow

Carvings: artworks | Autobiography: arts & entertainment

Published on 15^th February 2024 by Duckworth Books (Duckworth) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 304 pages
128mm x 198mm x 24mm | 268g

The highly acclaimed memoir of a renowned artisan with a new introduction by Jenny Uglow, The Lost Carving reveals the inspirational secrets of wood and craft. On a chance visit to St James's church, Piccadilly, David Esterly was awestruck by the delicate beauty and ambition of master carver Grinling Gibbons’s limewood decorations. The encounter changed the course of Esterly's life as he devoted himself to these lost techniques.

By 1986, when a fire at Hampton Court Palace destroyed much of Gibbons’s masterpiece, Esterly was the only candidate to restore his idol’s work to glory, though the experience forced him to question his abilities and delve deeply into the subtle skills of making.