Ian Marr: artist and lettercutter

Contact the artist:

Ian Marr, PO Box E49, Orange, NSW 2800
workshop 49 Nile Street, Orange, NSW 2800
phone 0427 612 101 or 02 6361 2101
fax 02 6362 1711
ianmarr@bigpond.com

Ian has worked as an artist in many media since the 1970s. He believes in the nourishing of art by scholarship, and has learnt his crafts through independent study and through master classes.

For the past six years he has been a zealous lettercutter, cutting texts from the literature and philosophy of the world.

Ian is particularly interested in placing text in stone in public and private gardens and in bushland settings.

He likes lettercut works to function both as garden furniture and art objects.

The texts for these works come from his own mind, his reading in current affairs, history and literature, discussions with friends, and commissions from his patrons.

Education: Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History, 1981; Graduate Diploma in Education, 1984, University of Sydney. Master classes with Sidney Ball, Fred Cress, Robin Norling, Jocelyn Maughan, Graham Nickson. Study visits to Eire and Great Britain, 1997 and 2000.

(image at left) Signs of rowing 2002; tablet in Mintaro slate and Sydney sandstone.

The quotation Ian has carved on this tablet is from the journal of the explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell, who was questioning the Barkindji people while searching for the inland sea in 1835.

The work is set on a clay pan at the Western Sculpture Park on the banks of the Darling River, at Mount Murchison Station, Wilcannia, New South Wales, Australia. The water in the photograph is from heavy rain, the previous night, which floods and overflows the clay pans.

(There is no inland sea in Australia.)

Where to see Ian and his work this year

Some current projects

Young family memorial

St Kilda Necropolis, Melbourne

Pilot guides

Pictorial and relief sculpture in slate of topographical maps of the Hawkesbury and Darling rivers based on the charts used by riverboat captains in the nineteenth century.

Proposal for a public memorial for the novelist Joseph Furphy (Tom Collins) for Shepparton, Victoria

on the centenary of the publication of Such is Life by the Bulletin in 1903

(image above:) Moonstone 2003; Mintaro slate, white gold.

About hand lettercutting

Ian Marr uses the ancient techniques of hand lettercutting in stone to create texts in slate and sandstone.

The craft skills of hand-cutting stone are very little practised in Australia. Most of the letters cut in stone that we see are done by machine, but the quality and gracefulness of hand-cut letters and decoration are much superior. In part this is because a craftsperson responds artistically to the shape and natural variation in a piece of stone, in part because each individual carving is more finely shaped.

There are many hours of work in each piece. After marking out the chosen quotation or design and tipping it in, the letter-cutter carves it out using tungsten-tipped chisels and strong but delicate blows from the hammer (dummy).

Ian Marr is one of very few Australians who cut letters in stone by hand, and we do not know of any others who use lettercutting to decorate stone furniture and other domestic pieces. The works usually have a practical function: as a water feature, a garden bench, an outdoor dining table, or a standing stone or column.

Because Ian could not find any comparable workers in stone in Australia, and because he wished to visit the traditional masters of this art, he has travelled to study techniques used in workshops in London and in Ireland.

(image above:) Editorial tree of life 2003; Mintaro slate disc, 320 mm diameter.

The works are texts from poets, novelists and philosophers, writing in any language or period of history. Ian will use a text if it seems to signify something, to have a link with the world and tradition of stone, or to express some beautiful or sublime aspect.

The cut letter relies on the sun's light throughout the day to give legibility, but rain or frost can produce exceptional and memorable effects. If not left plain, the cut letter can be decorated with acrylic paint, with rich artist's oil paints, or with sheets of pure gold.

The traditions of lettercutting stretch from the ancient world through Greek and Roman culture, to the Renaissance, and through a twentieth-century revival through personalities such as Eric Gill.

About the stone used in the works

The stone Ian most often uses is Mintaro slate, from the Clare Valley north of Adelaide, South Australia.

Slate has been quarried there since 1856, when the quarry was opened by Irish stonemason Thompson Priest. The slate is about 900 million years old, and exceptional in its qualities for lettercutting and bas-relief work, quite different in character from Welsh, Cumbrian and Irish slate.

Private collections, Australian and overseas

(This is only a partial list of some past works and their owners.)

Richard Allen (inscribed slate wine vat fragments)
Bloodwood Winery (the wine year)
Lady Juliet de Chair (pencil drawings)
Robert Crombie and Marianne Courtenay (Aristophanes Frogs stone)
Len Evans, Pokolbin (Periodic Table)
Rachel Flynn, artist's garden, Mudgee
Andrew and Frederica Furphy (Robert Graves' Turn of the moon table)
Bob Griffin (inscribed standing stone, Cooramilla garden)
Prince Henry of Hesse (drawings)
Michael and Doris Hobbs (stelae)
David and Genevieve Jacobs, GM Hopkins standing stone
James and Sally King, Rademon, County Down, Northern Ireland
Sir Robin Mackworth-Young (drawings)
'Nyrang' Homestead (Mt Canobolas watercolour; Francis Webb bench)
Jeffrey Plummer, Wentworth Falls (George Herbert table)
Bruce Rosenberg (Henry VIII Shakespeare table)
Tim Storrier (Cavafy table, Psalm 39 mantel)
John and Madeleine Winch (Apples of Cydonia, bench)
Tim and Lynn Winters (Camus bench)

Public collections

Bourke Shire Council (river map)
Kedumba Collection, Wentworth Falls (Homer table)
Mildura Arts Centre (monumental nilometer)
Orange Regional Gallery  (watercolour; stone sculptures from the series Arcadian Epigrams)
Wingecarribee Shire Council

Memorials

Eather Family memorial, Windsor
Frank Hodgkinson, Dural
A A Jacobs, Wallendbeen
AB Paterson, poet, bronze memorial, Yeoval
Austin Storrier, Bathurst
Peter Wright, Hill End

(image above:) Barka 2001, monumental nilometer in Mintaro slate.

Publications and magazines

'Messages in Stone', Australian Country Style, March 2004 (writer: Ali Gripper)
'Art set in stone', The Land, 4 December 2003 (writer: Melissa Lang)
In SITE Out review, Central Western Daily, 9 November 2003 (writer: Alan Sisley)
The Dribble [Burke & Hills Vineyard and Winery], issue 1, November 2003
'Slate commemorates Jubilee', Western Magazine, 20 October 2003
'75 years luncheon and celebrations', KWS newsletter, no. 70, p. 7
48 Hours, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 September 2003
Eryldene exhibition, North Shore Times, 19 September 2003
'Ian's stonework blooms with display', Central Western Daily, 20 August 2003
'Decadent habits', Susan Wyndham, Sydney Morning Herald, June 2003
'Site unseen', INSIDEout, April 2003, p. 129 (garden sculpture)
'The drought', Australian Geographic, April-June 2003, p. 9 (feature).
'Len Evans: wine visionary', Australian Wine Selector, Harvest 2003, p. 53 (slate table).
'Nilometer', featured work, Palimpsest 2001 site (interview) http://www.mediaust.com.au/palimpsest_2001/main_frameset.html
Palimpsest 2001, review by Robert Nelson, The Age, 9 May 2001
Palimpsest 2001, review by Victoria Roxburgh on the Contemporary Sculptors Association site, 9 May 2001
The Open Garden: Australian gardens and their gardeners 2000, by Louise Earwaker and Neil Robertson, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards (frontispiece)
Orange Then and Now, Orange City Council, 1996 (catalogue entry)
Humpy, House and Tin Shed by P Memmott, University of Sydney, 1991 (illustrations)
Fort Street by Ronald S Horan, 1989 (illustrations)
Country Australia, Readers Digest, 1989 (illustration)
Early Hawkesbury Settlers by Bobbie Hardy, Kangaroo Press, 1985 (illustrations)
Crown Lands Office Centenary Sketchbook, 1984 (illustrations and text)
Broken Hill Centenary Sketchbook, 1983 (illustrations and text).

Exhibitions