Colin Wood is a piece of living history, a character seemingly from a bygone era. This is because Colin is a rare thing in this world of mass and global production; he is the ‘village’ stonemason, living in the beautiful small Lincolnshire Wolds town of Caistor.
When I was cleaning Caistor war memorial last year, a sprightly older gentleman quietly introduced himself, telling me that his stonemason grandfather had erected the monument. He invited me a cup of tea, and his fascinating story began to unfold.
Colin still works out of the same C18th workshop that his grandfather began working from in the 1880s. However, unlike every other mason’s workshop I’ve visited, with its air-tools, grinders and computers, Colin’s workshop is pretty much unchanged from the nineteenth century. Working alone, entirely by hand (even his invoices are hand-written), his workshop has a pre-war feel about it that even the best National Trust curator couldn’t reconstruct. The distempered walls are covered with pencil sketches of memorial designs by the two generations who went before him. Many of his everyday tools are family heirlooms. In his charming house next door to the workshop are order books and receipts dating from the 1880s onwards – including a poignant gap during and just after the First World War.
Colin was taught letter drawing and carving by his father, and his style show an unbroken line to late C19 work, unselfconscious and not influenced by the likes of Gill, Kindersley et al. This in itself is fascinating, as Colin works in a 12-15 radius; once a local style would have been typical in any small town or village, and can still be seen in the churchyards in the pre-Victorian headstones, but now this is practically unknown (monumental mason workshop use computers, standard fonts, stencils and machinery for their inscriptions). Very content with his craft, Colin remains a busy man. However, tellingly, when I ask about apprentices, he tells me young people are baffled as to “why he wants to do it the slow way”. On leaving, I can’t help feeling a little sad that more than fifty years of experience and three generations of work will eventually come to an end when this gentle man finally packs away his chisels.
I made this robin print in the workshop this winter from vinyl. It’s produced from three blocks and printed in three colours – gold background, followed by red then black. Cutting Japanese vinyl is a real pleasure. It’s incredibly soft, allows for a great deal of detail and doesn’t seem to need to be used fresh in the way lino does – available from www.lawrence.co.uk amongst others.
school.
This Crosland Hill headstone was quite a design challenge. The client wanted a smallish stone, but a lot of references to different parts of the deceased’s life. Therefore, I also used the back of the stone to bring in all the elements she wanted.
