The making of Delilah – with Cedars Pottery, Antigua

Pearns Bay House is filled to the brim with carefully curated art and sculpture. A mix of international artists sit alongside locally commissioned pieces. Each month we will be diving deeper into some of the special pieces at Pearns Bay House.

Sitting majestically in the beachfront gardens is Delilah, a beautiful, feminine stone sculpture and the inspiration behind our logo! This piece was created by local studio, Cedars Pottery. We caught up with artist Michael, to find out more about the process of creating her.

What was the inspiration for Delilah?
I first created Samson for the owners of Pearns Bay House. Samson was a brutalist, mechanistic and masculine piece. As with the story of Samson and Delilah, they needed something feminine and nurturing in contrast.

What was your creative process?
During the ‘origination’ phase, I played around with the masculine/feminine contrast.

Once a candidate stone was sourced, I would spend time around it with lumps of clay, pinching out maquette’s, influenced largely by the form of the rock.

With the model established the cutting would begin, working with diamond-tipped grinders, mallet and chisels. Typically a three or four-hour working day is established as the cutting is arduous and physically taxing. Until the form begins to emerge the work feels like nothing more than ‘hard labour’!

With the sight of the form comes clarity, direction and light to aim for at the end of the tunnel.

How did you decide what stone to use?
The bulk of my work up until now has settled on two main types of rock available on the island. The softer is a Limestone but for Samson and Delilah, I chose the much harder and durable Andesite, which is an igneous rock (same as the Andes mountain range) family to Granite and Basalt.

What made you decide on Delilah’s final resting place?
With so much invested in a piece, you want it to be seen, so particularly for Delilah, it needed to be in a position clearly visible from several vantage points.

If someone wanted to commission a piece from Cedars Pottery – what is the normal process you go through?
I would have an initial consultation with the client to get a sense of their interest, then a back and forth with sketches and images to arrive at something more concrete. Finally, maquette’s are produced to get an easier visualisation of the form before the final creation.

Finally, what’s the best way to get in touch with you or find out more?
I’m ‘old school’ when it comes to ‘tech’ so email is the best bet:

mh.hunt@icloud.com or potteryc@candw.ag.

Or visit www.cedarspottery.com.