Materially Speaking

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Originally from Paris, Nicolas first came to Carrara with his father, also a sculptor, who was working on a monumental piece at Henraux.

Now he live…

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Co-founder of Studio Pescarella near Pietrasanta, Jaya was born in California, moved to Switzerland with her family as a teenager, and later lived …

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Born in Soissons, France, Emmanuel went to trade school at the age of 16 to learn how to renovate historical monuments by hand, specialising in gra…

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Lucy Dickens is an artist and illustrator, whose works exudes humour. Close friends since the age of three, Lucy and Sarah ramble and percolate ove…

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Welcome back to a second series of Materially Speaking – where artists and artisans tell us their stories through the materials they choose. 

In th…

Materially Speaking began with interviews from artists and artisans working near Pietrasanta in northern Italy, where generations of artists have come since Michelangelo first arrived over 500 years …

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Sollai Cartwright takes inspiration from everything around him creating both abstract and figurative work.

Sollai talks about his favourite stone, …

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Born into an artistic family in Australia, Jacob has been living in Italy, on and off, since he was two-years-old. He began his musical training v…

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Christian Lange apprenticed as a chiseller in Freiburg, Germany, and started out as a stonemason restoring churches before coming to Pietrasanta t…

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Rita Meier learned the direct carving technique from artisans and the international community of artists in the studios around Pietrasanta. In thi…

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Californian artist Neal Barab says his work is variously influenced by Mexican pre-Colombian art, art from the Cyclades, African art, Japanese ani…

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When Almuth Tebbenhoff came to London in the late 1960s she started from scratch: learning a new language, finding a job and studying to be a pott…

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After what he describes as a ‘very free’ art education, Australian-born Michael Francis Cartwright first came to Carrara in Italy 35 years ago wit…

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Liverpudlian Martin Foot always loved learning and since childhood dreamt of carving in stone. At the age of 13 he worked weekends for his uncle, …

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Shona Nunan and her husband, Michael Francis Cartwright, left Australia for Italy to tell the world, and themselves, that they were committed to b…

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Eilis O’Connell studied at art school in Cork, Ireland in the early 1970s. She was fascinated by making something small and then realising it big.…

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Canadian Douglas Robinson arrived in Pietrasanta in 1979 to learn from the artisans. He worked with Jørgen Sørensen and took to stone as his main …

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Eppe de Haan was born in Arnhem, Holland and studied art at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. Originally a painter, he came to Pietrasanta to …

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Jim Hager, from California, has been carving marble in Pietrasanta, Northern Italy, for almost 30 years. He talks to us about his Sculpture for Ho…

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Stephan Hamel – a brand catalyst who divides his time between Milan, Vienna and Pietrasanta – tells the story of his Italian grandfather laying ma…