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We got a commission a while back from this philanthropist, if that's the word, who had a lot of money and wanted to make a statement about racism and segregation. He ordered large granite stone effigies of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mohammed Ali. They're all people who campaigned against racism and the like.
Ali famously threw his Olympic medal in the Hudson river when he wasn't served in a white restaurant. Anyway, this man had planned to take the statues back to Cape Town with him. Unfortunately it hasn't worked out like that. I think his situation is a little different now. He may have lost some money in the downward spiral in the world economy. The long and short of it is that he won't be collecting them. But we don't really mind because the same man has bought a lot of stuff here over the years.
The statues have been in the yard now for over a year but they're good stock and everything sells eventually. And while we wouldn't mind moving them on, they do attract a lot of attention. They're all eight feet tall, about a third bigger than the real person. So they have quite a presence. With things being so good for the last 10 or 12 years it was no bother investing a bit of money in something unusual. So I've no regrets about the commission. It was worth the risk. I've always felt that if something sells, well and good, if it doesn't so be it.
The statues take about 10 weeks from the time you order them up until the time you get them. There's one particular place in China where all the good carvers are and you can get a good resemblance of a face. If you pass by the statues you'd have no problem identifying Tutu, Gandhi, Mandela and Ali. They're really good. You send photos to this place in China and they send you back images of how it's coming along and you can tell them if it's too fat or too thin or it's not really a good resemblance. They usually ask for five shots of the face to get the bone structure right. The statues are done by hand with some very, very primitive machinery. They start off with a big angle grinder and they finish up with a small one. It's very precise work and a real craft. These guys don't even wear sandals. They do the work in their bare feet but I suppose they've a nice ole climate over there.
As well as the occasional unusual commission and replica stuff like stone pillars or fountains, we specialise in industrial salvage. And we've found that the recession has brought people back to the old stuff again rather than getting everything new. They like to find things. We get people coming into us with a few slates or a nice piece of stained glass that has been sitting in their garage. Then they see something in my yard that they need so we do a deal with them. The buzz seems to have gone out of the demand for new stuff. That demand was to do with all the new houses. Now we're going back to doing what we used to do, which is recycling old bits of stone and timber. The old stuff is our bread and butter and I always knew it would come back to that to be honest.
We've become known as the place with your man with the glasses standing outside. They're talking about Gandhi of course. The effigies are good for getting attention and make people curious about what other kind of stuff we have on sale but I haven't gotten too attached to them. Business is business. I'd sell anything that stood still long enough.
As told to Claire Ryan
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