Richard Kindersley is the only artist carving brick in situ on a large scale. However there was a flourishing tradition of brick sculpture in the 1930’s. Sculptors such as Ledwood, Ayers and Gill produced notable carvings and in 1932 Eric Gill carved a delightful crocodile on the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge. The remarkable condition of these earlier carvings allay any concerns about the weathering of carved brickwork.

Richard Kindersley started brick carving in the late 1970’s. As there was no existing tradition that had been passed on from the earlier carving of Gill and others, he had to re-discover the techniques of brick a carving. This required research into methods of carving with the need to produce clear shadows within the limited depth of relief. The maximum relief on most bricks is only 18-20mm. The limiting factor is the distance between the inside edge of the frog and the outside face of the brick. A skilful carver gives the illusion of depth by constantly coming back to the original surface in the carving so that at any one point the maximum relief is available. All relief or bass relief carving is a combination of drawing and carving to give the illusion of depth, the more so with brick sculpture.

There is something very special, perhaps a little intimidating about carving directly onto a large building. The size and sheer physicality of the work coupled with the consequences of making serious mistakes are thoughts that concentrate the mind. In failure the painter can reach for a new canvas, the sculptor can obtain a new block of stone. The brick carver, working on a building costing many millions of pounds, is faced with a dilemma of a different magnitude if a serious mistake is made.

Although fired from natural clays, a brick is essentially a man-made object. It therefore lacks the predictable grain, hardness and cleavage of natural stones. These latter materials have a character that arises from their earlier geological history that a skilful carver understands and uses, exploiting it to the advantage of the chisel. With brick’s unpredictability, there is a need when carving to be ever watchful for sudden changes of hardness and softness, for flaws such as gas blowholes caused during firing. And yet it yields from these technical difficulties a carving that has its own special qualities. The rich play of colour is discovered by the chisel when the outer skin of the brick is removed. The brick jointing cutting through the carving acts like the staves in musical notation, giving a repetitive tension in which the work is held. The textural quality of the carving is subtle, resting quietly within the brickwork and it is this unique quality of being part of the architecture that makes brick carving so attractive.  >