Your Story Immortalised in Marble
A history of you or your business, hand carved for eternity in Marble.
No problem keeping up with the Ancient Greeks.
Their celebrities used marble reliefs to line their walls: they told the story of their Gods, or even more interestingly, they told the stories of themselves. We can do the same for you, or your organisation, using the skills of contemporary marble craftsmen. From a single frieze telling your story, or maybe up to twenty separate friezes. You supply the photographs and we’ll do the rest;
Marble is a lovely glowing substance; that’s its power.
From creating the original reliefs in clay to the completed sculptures in beautiful hand carved marble. They’ll be an unchanging, everlasting memorial, to you, your life and achievements, or those of your corporation.
Then set them in a wall, or several walls, of your drawing room or your corporate head quarters.
Marble Icons are specialists in hand carved Marble, from marble garden statues, sculptural pieces, art carvings, marble reliefs, marble fireplaces, columns & capitals, Greek and Roman statues, marble busts, marble architecture, marble fountains, garden decorations, architectural pieces, water features, marble designs and classical marble statues.
Marble Icons brings affordability to the almost lost art of marble carving, bridging the gap between what could only be a dream, to the permanence of art in stone
Most beautiful of all the stones used in statues and reliefs is marble, and for centuries sculptors have crafted this stone to produce the works we see in museums and other public buildings in the capitals of the world.
The word marble comes from the Greek word MARMAROS, meaning ‘shining stone’.
Greek and Roman sculptors favoured the medium of marble to produce their statues and busts and reliefs, and since then, marble has become a cultural symbol of tradition and refined taste.
In folklore, marble is associated with the astrological sign of Gemini. Pure white marble is an emblem of purity. It is also an emblem of immortality and ‘insurer of success in education’.
Modern western society with its high cash values has made it virtually impossible for artists to sculpt marble statues from the raw marble block, even if they still had the skills. And so those skills have in the main been lost.
But not entirely.
Marble Icons offers marble statuary, that is, marble busts and marble statues, and marble reliefs, carved in exactly the same way as the great works of Michelangelo and Canova, Thorvaldsen and Rodin, using the highest quality, all natural marble. We carve stones brought from the finest quarries of Europe and the bountiful quarries of Asia, where equally pure white marble has been used for centuries for the sculptures and structures of the palaces of the Great Emperors.
We have recreated many of the most significant marbles of the past, and we feel as if we are not so much copying, but extending the studios of those great artists of the 16th,17th, 18th and 19th centuries with the integrity and truth which went into the creation of their sculptures.
The originals can never be owned, because they are priceless icons in the world’s great museums, but Marble Icons makes it possible for these works of art to be in the possession of a family or corporation for a future which we cannot anticipate or probably imagine. And they will remain inviolate and unchanged for hundreds of years.
A Brief note on marble
As with all products of nature, marble has colour variations from block to block as well as from quarry to quarry.
To ensure a consistent colour for our products, we cut all the components required for any piece from the same marble block.
But marble is a living stone and it has veins and other blemishes. These are part of the natural beauty of the stone.
Our Designers
The Designers at Marble Icons are award winning, world-renowned artists in their own right.
When you purchase a bespoke marble sculpture or relief from Marble Icons, you have the unique opportunity to work closely with one of our world-leading designers.
Bespoke Sculptures
We showcase some of the works of renowned sculptor, Andrew Sinclair, with whom we have had the pleasure of working on several full size sculptural pieces. Andrew specialises in figurative, portrait and surrealist sculpture, and his incredible ability to create stunning realist sculptures is perfect for the clay work necessary for all marble sculptures.
Finishing Touches
Once you are happy with your design, the designer handcrafts a one-off clay model of your design. This model is then sent to one of our studios where our world-class artisans set about turning your dream into reality with expert precision.
Excerpt from the BBC documentary “How Art Made The World” concerning greek sculpture.
Presented by Dr Nigel Spivey (University of Cambridge).
Continued…..
Speaking of the ancient Greeks and ancient Macedonians as they were two different peoples, this tale must end. Macedonians were Greeks, as the Thessalian were Greeks, like the Spartans were Greeks.
You only have to cast your eyes over Andrew’s portfolio to see the incredible detail which goes into his works. And working with him is a joy. There are no set rules. Some clients produce a rough sketch and ask him to get on with it, and others prefer to have more input. Either way, clays are made and the client can see exactly what the finished product will look like before it is committed to stone or bronze.Andrew’s work can be found in many locations in the UK in both public and private houses. He had a large dinosaur exhibit in this year’s Chelsea Flower Show and he has recently completed the design work for the Royal Coat of Arms at Ascot.
The essential premise of the show, according to Spivey, is that of all the defining characteristics of humanity as a species, none is more basic than the inclination to make art.
Great apes will smear paint on canvas if they are given brushes and shown how, but they do not instinctively produce art any more than parrots produce conversation.
We humans are alone in developing the capacity for symbolic imagery.
