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David Holgate has been a stone carver on and off
for 50 years.
He grew up in his parents' pub in Cambridgeshire,
learning jazz guitar from his dad, and drawing and painting things
he saw around.
"When I was coming to the end of my school days
I really didn't know what I was going to do," said David.
"Very fortunately I heard a guy called David
Kindersley was looking for an apprentice stone carver.
"I took some of my school work and little
clay models and things and went to see him and I got the job."
David works on a headstone with one of his chisels from his
1,000-strong collection. |
Now he works in a very small studio in the corner
of the courtyard of his house in Norwich.
"I discovered that in fact I don't need a lot of
space to actually do the carving, but I do need plenty of space
for the storage of my tools and equipment," he said.
So David keeps his collection of chisels - nearly
a thousand of them - in the cellar.
He uses them to carve anything from traditional
headstones and nameplates to original sculptures in both stone and
wood.
His work features on churches, in gardens and in
private collections.
But it was music that brought him to Norwich and
which kept him from carving for a while.
David plays the double bass, and worked professionally
for 17 years both as a session musician for Anglia Television, and
touring in the 1970s with a band called The Rainbow People.
But in the end it got too much. "I began to get
disillusioned with all the travelling," said David.
"I started a little stone carving workshop.
It took about four years to establish myself locally."
A big project he's been involved in recently is
the carving of two figures, to fill the empty niches each side of
the main entrance to Norwich Cathedral.
"Either side of the main door you can see these
two full-sized stone carvings of mother Julian and St Benedict.
"They're actually the first full-sized figures
I've ever carved so for me, this was a really, really scary project,"
he said.
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