On 6-7 May 2016, the Art School welcomed over 330 visitors for our first-ever Historic Carving Open House. The two-day event – part of the second annual London Craft Week – consisted of opportunities to visit woodcarving students in their studios; gilding demonstrations; an exhibition of student and alumni woodcarvings; the first alumni reunion for former Historic Carving students; and an opportunity to try your hand at stone carving.
One of the weekend’s highlights was a live competition among our current Historic Stone Carving students. Over the two days, students had 11 hours to carve pieces of their own design on the subject of ‘The Thames’. A hundred-strong crowd eagerly counted down the final minutes and then voted on the ‘crowd favourite’, which accompanied a peer prize and a grand prize supported by the Masons’ Company. The results were hugely varied and impressive, not only to the spectators but to the students themselves as to how much they could achieve in such a short amount of time!