David Esterly
David Esterly (born May 10, 1944 in Akron , Ohio - † June 15, 2019 in Barneveld , New York ) was an American sculptor and author. He mainly worked with limewood and is known for his naturalistic high reliefs in the style of the British baroque sculptor Grinling Gibbons . David Esterly was married and last lived in the US state of New York.
Life
Esterly was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1944, but grew up in Orange County , California. He graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree and graduated from Cambridge , where he received a bachelor's and doctorate degree through the Fulbright program . His major was English. In his doctoral thesis he dealt with the Irish poet William Butler Yeats and the ancient philosopher Plotinus .
After completing his studies, he rejected the idea of an academic career. He turned to wood carving after first consciously seeing a carving by Grinling Gibbons in the Christopher Wren church of St. James in London . Esterly then retired to a cottage in Sussex to teach himself gibbon-style wood carving. Although he was repeatedly warned with the words "Carvers are starvers" (carvers are hunger artists), he kept on making a living in this way.
Reconstruction of gibbons carvings
In 1986 a fire damaged parts of Hampton Court Palace . The fire had broken out above the king's parade rooms and was discovered early enough to save the portable works of art in that part of the palace. The decorative carvings of Gibbons nailed high up on the paneling, however, were damaged by fire and extinguishing water. A carving more than two meters long that adorned the side of a door burned completely. Esterly was commissioned to create a reproduction of this lost carving and worked at Hampton Court Palace for a year. Esterly's experiences during this time are described in the non-fiction book The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making , which was published in the USA in 2012 and in Great Britain in 2013. In it, he describes, among other things, the resistance within the palace administration to commission an American with the restoration of a British cultural heritage, his collaboration with other wood sculptors who worked on the restoration of the gibbons carvings damaged by the fire and extinguishing water, their joint endeavor, the Gibbons 'specific technique and the discussions about the extent to which the carvings should be restored to a state they had at Gibbons' time. In particular, there was the question of whether the wax layers that had been applied to these originally untreated carvings over the centuries could be preserved and whether they should be used to restore the condition that they had immediately before the fire. In his book, Esterly also reflects in general on the importance of creative work. Critics called his book a wonderful meditation on the creative process. His first book on Grinling Gibbons (Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving) , published in 1998, had already been described as an ingenious and very learned work.
Esterly was critical of the use of sandpaper for the final smoothing of wooden surfaces. Sandpaper is an invention of the 19th century. Influenced by the art historian John Ruskin , who had argued that surfaces developed a boring, diffuse calm when they were treated with sandpaper (Ruskin speaks of smooth, diffused tranquility in the original text ), he had assumed that baroque woodcarvers like gibbons had a special effect on their shimmering surfaces would achieve careful work with the carving tools. However, on careful examination of the carvings that had been spared by the fire, regular notches were noticed. Gibbons had obviously used a natural abrasive to smooth the surfaces. An instrument maker pointed out that winter horsetail was mentioned as an abrasive in older texts . Experiments with these dried plants produced identical processing marks.
Gibbons exhibition
Esterly campaigned for a separate exhibition of Gibbons' work while working at Hampton Court Palace. This suggestion also met with little response from the administration of Hampton Court Palace. From Esterly's point of view, the acceptance of the gibbons carvings after the fire at Hampton Court Palace offered a unique opportunity to show them to an interested public in closer proximity. However, a Gibbons exhibition did not take place until 1998 in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Esterly acted as curator for this exhibition.
Own work
With his own carvings, Esterly first concentrated on ornamental work and then on wooden sculptures that are reminiscent of still lifes; “botanical heads” were created in the manner of the paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo . He developed this style when he was a guest artist at the American Academy in Rome in 2002 .
Publications
- Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving , Abrams, 1998
- The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making , Viking / Penguin, 2013
Web links
- Official website of David Esterly
- Image material for The Lost Carving , in which David Esterly deals with the restoration of an ornamental wall decoration by Grinling Gibbons
- Re-Creating The 'Lost Carving' Of An English Genius , website about the reconstruction of the lost carving of Grinling Gibbons
Individual evidence
- ↑ David Esterly, 75, Master Carver Steeped in History and Nature, Dies , New York Times, June 21, 2019, accessed June 21, 2019
- ^ Esterly: The Lost Carving, 2013, Chapter II: The Use of Time is Fate.
- ^ Esterly: The Lost Carving, 2013, Chapter II: A Metaphor for everything.
- ^ Review in the Salon of December 24, 2012 , accessed on January 5, 2014
- ^ Review of the Gibbons exhibition in the Victoria and Albert Museum in the Independent on Sunday on November 1, 1998, which also deals with Esterly's book. , accessed January 5, 2014
- ↑ Esterly: The Lost Carving, 2013, Chapter V: The Art That Arrives Even to Deseption.
- ^ David Esterly: The Lost Carving - A Journey to the Heart of Making . London 2013, ISBN 978-0-7156-4649-6 . Chapter VIII: Meaning isn't the Meaning
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Esterly, David |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American sculptor and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 10, 1944 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Akron , Ohio |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 15, 2019 |
| Place of death | Barneveld (New York) |