My Grandfather's Last Sculpture

One of the many sacred objects that I keep close…

My grandad’s unfinished wooden carving of a swan was the culmination of his many sculpture projects that were woven into his work and retirement life. He had been a tool maker in a West Riding woollen mill but in his spare time did many wooden and alabaster sculptures (sometimes of beautiful naked women, sometimes more practical bowls) but he got more modernist as he got older. After he died and I went through his books I began to see how he became influenced by Miro’s drawings, I think, and Henry Moore.

This modernist swan was the last thing he was working on when he died. I look at the swan and think that his hands worked that… I’d talked to my mum about somehow trying to finish it, polishing it up, but I decided against it. The rough texture keeps him somehow more present.