Pair carving out nice career in stone work

Wanting to immortalise your family as a set a gargoyles may sound like an unusual request – but Brian Gibbs says it's not that uncommon.

"I have been asked a few times to go to people's houses and create gargoyles and grotesques based on the faces of the family," says Brian, 46, who lives in Crockington Lane, Seisdon.

"You look at the features of the person and then make their prominent features bigger and maybe add crooked teeth, a big eye or massive tongue.

"A lot of people want items for their homes that they can't buy off the shelf at a garden centre or DIY store.

"At the moment I'm working on an odd request for a man who lives in Manchester and he wants a life-sized stone carving of himself playing a banjo."

Brian has a business, with John Vaughan from Wednesbury, called JLB architectural carving and restoration, based at Four Ashes Industrial Estate in Wolverhampton.

Some of the carvings created by Brian and John have become landmarks in the region.

They include:

* Morrisons in Wednesbury, which has carved local sandstone rosettes in the car park.

* St Nicholas Church in Codsall, where they created a carved wooden gate.

* Two Portland stone carvings at the entrance of Wednesbury bus station

* St Mary's Church in Albrighton, where there is a Yorkshire sandstone cross.

* Shropshire Wildlife Trust in Shrewsbury, with four stone heads created as sensory sculptures from granite, limestone and sandstone

* Broadway College in Dudley, which has stone carvings of items such as a computer and a book made from Derbyshire stone.

The pair have also completed restoration work at Westminster Abbey, creating and restoring gargoyles and figures using Portland stone.

John, aged 55, of Hanley Street in Wednesbury also lectures in masonry at Mons Hill College in Dudley.

"There are a lot of places that need restoration work, such as churches, castles and manor houses," says John.

"However, I do both modern and classical styles, so I created the stone carvings of two figures woven together which can be found on the Dudley by-pass."

The duo have also teamed up with Lindsay Welch, who lives in Worcestershire and used to work for Royal Worcester but is now a stone carver.

Brian has been involved in restoration masonry since he was 25-years-old.

"I wasn't interested in school and so in my 20s I went to work in Southampton helping masons lift the stone blocks," he says. "It wasn't long before one of them taught me how to carve the stone and I thought 'I can do this'.

"I teamed up with John when I did his course at Mons Hill College and since then we have gone from strength to strength.

"One of our main concerns is that carving of stone and wood is a dying art.

"It is difficult to get young people involved as England is really backward in training.

"John's course is not well advertised or subsidised and costs £700."

Brian says every week he has at least two phone calls from up-market builders and architects asking for carvings.

So, do Brian and John ever travel around the country to see how their carvings are standing up to the test of time?

"Quite often you are sent a drawing for a carving, you do the work, it is picked up and you have no idea where it is going," says John.

"However, a carver always knows his own work when he sees it – it is always a nice surprise to walk through a town centre, look up at the bank and see a stone carving you have done."