Craftspeople Andrew Kay makes lifelike steel sculptures inspired by Cumbrian wildlife.

Animal Magic

Andrew Kay’s stylised yet lifelike steel sculptures of birds and animals are inspired by the wildlife near his Cumbrian home, but find their way to clients across the globe

WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY PHOTOGRAPHS KAT WEATHERILL

Sculptor Andrew Kay with one of his distinctive pieces: a grazing doe, displayed in the hills near his home.

There are many single-track roads edged with mossy stone walls in Cumbria. But between Kirkby Lonsdale and Kendal, not far from the River Lune as it wends its way towards Lancaster, one route in particular leads to the workshop of wildlife sculptor Andrew Kay.

The beauty of the region has long been celebrated. William Turner and John Ruskin immortalised the Lune valley at Kirkby Lonsdale in paintings and words, with Ruskin describing it as ‘one of the loveliest scenes in England’. Even today, the observant visitor, rounding moorland hills spangled

Above Each piece of sculpture starts with a sketch that Andrew eventually scales up to work from in steel. with black-faced Swaledale sheep, may spot a red deer emerging from a distant wood, or note a buzzard gliding overhead, its wings moving minutely as it scans the ground for prey. At dusk, wild geese might honk, or a passing hare could scamper across a silent field. Each of these, and many more, Andrew has noticed and celebrated in metal garden sculptures that magically capture the spirit of an animal through the manipulation of steel. “I love animals and I love wildlife,” says Andrew. “If someone had told me that one day I’d make a reasonable living as a wildlife sculptor, I would have said ‘that’s fantastic’. But I’m a medium: I use the wildlife as the inspiration.” The seasonal nuances of this corner of northern England are ingrained in Andrew, who was born in Penrith and attended Giggleswick School in Settle, a few miles south-east of Kirkby Lonsdale. Later he took a degree in design at Leeds. “I met a local girl, Anneley, whose parents had a bookshop, and we set up home and stayed,” he says. In the early 1990s, Andrew had a small metalwork business mending muck-spreaders and making curtain rails, but his best-seller was a poker with a dragon-head handle that he sold to his local squash club. “It was a simple hand-to-mouth existence initially. We didn’t have much money to speak of, but equally we didn’t want for much,” he recalls. “Carving and making things was all I wanted to do.” The poker was the first indication of the direction he would take. In the years that followed, Andrew expanded his business, taking pride in making small pieces until an agent brought him jobs in Leeds and Manchester, and then one-offs for JD Wetherspoon pubs. The rewards were mixed: the extra work was helpful, but his creativity was inspired by the wildness of the hills and valleys in which he had grown up. As with so many creative people who must make ends meet but feel a yearning for something more fulfilling, he began experimenting, making animal sculptures.

In 2006, Anneley encouraged Andrew to advertise this work in a national weekend paper. With little passing trade in this corner of the world, he needed to get the word out and she believed it was worth pushing. His circumstances changed almost overnight. “I paid £400 for a little one-column advert, which was almost more than I could risk. But

we got 12 orders that weekend. I made the 12 stags and delivered them myself around the country. With the profits from that I started to advertise more and more, and it grew from there,” he says.

As his work gathered pace, the workshop moved first into a 16th-century barn and then to a purposebuilt structure on land bought from a neighbouring farmer. Andrew and Anneley live in the barn these days, which has been renovated into a home. A stream runs along the bottom of the garden and, on neighbouring farmland, a wild area is maintained for Natural England, the public body charged with safeguarding the natural environment. Swans, coots and herons live on the banks of a nearby lake, and buzzards roost in a copse of trees close by. “At night you can see the lights of Kendal ten miles north of us, but it’s pretty dark out here,” Andrew observes. “The skies are humbling: the stars put things into perspective if you’re worrying about making a deadline or doing a VAT return.”

Each sculpture is inspired by nature and Andrew then sources images online or from books. He studies them anatomically, looking for the way an animal’s limbs relate to each other, the position of it at rest or on high alert, and the overall scale of it in relation to real life. “I print off the images and then think about what the outline should be and sketch it out. I try to get the form and the demeanour of the animal right,” he explains.

If he’s happy with his sketch, he will print it onto acetate. Then, using an old-school overhead projector, he transfers the sketch onto a large sheet

Top left Andrew now works from a purposebuilt workshop set amid Cumbrian farmland. Top right Andrew adds the finishing touches. Left Once a sculpture is finished, the steel is left to develop a rugged, rusted patina.

of card. This way, he can create a life-size representation of the drawing. Once he has the image at scale, he’ll work on the metal form, referring constantly to the scaled-up drawing to make sure an incline or extension is correct. “Making the sculpture isn’t all that difficult actually, but you have to capture the moment in an animal – if a stag will run or protect. If you don’t get that down, there’s no point carrying on. And I do make mistakes,” he admits.

He starts with 16mm steel bars for the legs, cutting them to the correct length. From there, he

works piece by piece, frequently standing back at a five-metre distance to get a sense of the creation. “Usually it’s all about diminishing triangles as you work up,” Andrew says. “I never want to overload them. I want to allow the eye to join the dots.”

Prototypes and one-offs take longest to get right. “I might start it and go away and then get back to it again later,” he says. “It can take a week to get right, but we’ll use that as a master.” The completed highgrade steel pieces are left outside to rust; painting and galvanising are discouraged.

Today, Andrew, Anneley and the two craftspeople they employ work to commission for a variety of customers around the world. But there is a range of pieces that Andrew calls – reluctantly, lest it sound pretentious – the studio line. Clients include diplomats, aristocrats, film stars and peers with properties large enough to accommodate a family of red deer, which, at a distance are sufficiently realistic for the observer to wonder, for a moment, if what they’re seeing is actually alive. But there are also those for whom a pheasant or heron poised beside a small pond is enough.

When we speak, Andrew is anxiously tracking the progress of a cargo ship crossing the Atlantic to the United States. There’s a family of deer on board and someone has commissioned them for a new home thousands of miles from this quiet Cumbrian valley. “We put them on a pallet, pack them and strap them, and off they go down the road,” he notes.

The most cherished commission, however, came from a local farmer, a breeder of Swaledales, who wanted a pair of his prized sheep. “He couldn’t look me in the eye because he was embarrassed that it wasn’t something with a purpose – farmers don’t usually buy sculpture. He said, ‘There you are, go and make it.’ But he came round every day to make sure the horns were right, the ears, the snouts…” n

Top Andrew’s creativity is intertwined with the countryside where he was born and grew up. Above right River Heron is an ideal piece for a smaller garden. Above left An alert hind surveys the moorland.

Andrew Kay Sculpture, Beckside Studio, Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria LA6 2QG. Tel: +44 (0)1524 271575; andrewkaysculpture.co.uk

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T&C’s. For the latest applicable terms and conditions, please refer to our website: www.albionjourneys.com/terms-and-conditions. Just Go Holidays Ltd trading as Albion Journeys. USA address: 27 North Chestnut Street, New Paltz, NY 1256, USA. UK registered address: 1st Floor, 111 High Street, Cheltenham GL50 1DW, United Kingdom.

1-866-834-8358 (US toll free)

albionjourneys.com ? info@albionjourneys.com