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The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making
“A beautiful, intricate meditation on creativity and discovery, on fire and rebirth.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
Awestruck at the sight of a Grinling Gibbons carving in a London church, David Esterly chose to dedicate his life to woodcarving—its physical rhythms, intricate beauty, and intellectual demands. Forty years later, he is the foremost practitioner of Gibbons’s forgotten technique, which revolutionized ornamental sculpture in the late 1600s with its spectacular cascades of flowers, fruits, and foliage.
After a disastrous fire at Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace, Esterly was asked to replace the Gibbons masterpiece destroyed by the flames. It turned out to be the most challenging year in Esterly’s life, forcing him to question his abilities and delve deeply into what it means to make a thing well. Written with a philosopher’s intellect and a poet’s grace, The Lost Carving explores the connection between creativity and physical work and illuminates the passionate pursuit of a vocation that unites head and hand and heart.
Awestruck at the sight of a Grinling Gibbons carving in a London church, David Esterly chose to dedicate his life to woodcarving—its physical rhythms, intricate beauty, and intellectual demands. Forty years later, he is the foremost practitioner of Gibbons’s forgotten technique, which revolutionized ornamental sculpture in the late 1600s with its spectacular cascades of flowers, fruits, and foliage.
After a disastrous fire at Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace, Esterly was asked to replace the Gibbons masterpiece destroyed by the flames. It turned out to be the most challenging year in Esterly’s life, forcing him to question his abilities and delve deeply into what it means to make a thing well. Written with a philosopher’s intellect and a poet’s grace, The Lost Carving explores the connection between creativity and physical work and illuminates the passionate pursuit of a vocation that unites head and hand and heart.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published December 27, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
January 20, 2015
American woodcarver Esterly restored Grinling Gibbons’s limewood carvings at Hampton Court Palace after a 1986 fire. Revisiting his diary from that year, he meditates on the role of brain vs. body in the creative process and asks how we can be faithful to history. I particularly loved the last lines of his prologue: “The workroom begins to fade away. On go the hands. The mind slips its mooring and lets the river take it where it will.”
The black-and-white photographs, showing some of Gibbons’s carvings as well as Esterly’s own, are a highlight. A subtle, meditative work, ideal for savoring a bit at a time.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
Related reading: The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal and The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock are also about the intricacies of artistic creation.
The black-and-white photographs, showing some of Gibbons’s carvings as well as Esterly’s own, are a highlight. A subtle, meditative work, ideal for savoring a bit at a time.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
Related reading: The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal and The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock are also about the intricacies of artistic creation.
December 15, 2021
This book with its wandering path through art, philosophy, woodcarving and restoration is the type of quirky book you either love or hate. I loved it. After a fire at Hampton Court destroys irreplaceable 17th century Grinling Gibbons decorative carvings, the author becomes involved in the effort to replace them, which involves understanding how they were created and creative decisions complicated by overlapping bureaucracies. The numerous pictures demonstrate Grinling Gibbons' and the author's mad woodcarving skills and how something as hard as wood can be transformed into a delicate garland of flowers or a lace cravat.
"Carvers are bringers of shadows, stainers of the white radiance of eternity, wreckers of a smooth plank. They live in a world permeated by error. Every carving starts the same way. You stare at a drawing on a board and think to yourself. I may not know exactly what should be there but at least I can see some things that shouldn't. So you start by rounding the corners of a sawn-out peach, thinking, Well, I can't go wrong with that anyway."
"Carvers are bringers of shadows, stainers of the white radiance of eternity, wreckers of a smooth plank. They live in a world permeated by error. Every carving starts the same way. You stare at a drawing on a board and think to yourself. I may not know exactly what should be there but at least I can see some things that shouldn't. So you start by rounding the corners of a sawn-out peach, thinking, Well, I can't go wrong with that anyway."
February 6, 2013
This book is a journal about the author's involvement in the restoration of carvings by Grinling Gibbons in the palace at Hampton Court after a devastating fire. It is also the story of the author's journey away from academia and scholarly work and into the world of artisan carving. Always a scholar, the author shares his knowledge of Gibbons and his world, leads us through the detective & guess work of restoration, exposes the fiefdoms within the museum, art & curatorial worlds, revealing the heartache to the artisan as choices are made for historical (in)accuracy. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and the chance to dip into the exacting, compulsive, compelling & Don Quixote-like world of carving and restoration.
August 18, 2024
This book is well written and literary but slow going. I can't remember another reasonable length book it's taken me quite this long to read. I took breaks but still, I've been reading this book basically all summer. I truly enjoyed passages of the writing on creativity and the absolutely strange process of making something beautiful but I do feel like certain parts could have been shortened or edited out together. At times the author goes a bit mad and that feels very true to the art making process; sometimes the world disappears and you just have what you're making. Priorities shift.
The author, a wood carver hired to recreate a damaged wooden carving in a historic house in England, spends a lot of time worrying about and complaining about the bureaucratic authorities that temporarily have power over him as a hired worker. He's obsessed with getting the carving a museum show and certain aspects of how it will be displayed. I understand caring about the work you do but these points get pretty far away from the thesis of the book which is about creativity, the role of reproduction, our obligations as a society to preserve art, etc. I also agree with other reviewers that the quotes from Shakespeare and philosophers come off a bit pretentious.
The author, a wood carver hired to recreate a damaged wooden carving in a historic house in England, spends a lot of time worrying about and complaining about the bureaucratic authorities that temporarily have power over him as a hired worker. He's obsessed with getting the carving a museum show and certain aspects of how it will be displayed. I understand caring about the work you do but these points get pretty far away from the thesis of the book which is about creativity, the role of reproduction, our obligations as a society to preserve art, etc. I also agree with other reviewers that the quotes from Shakespeare and philosophers come off a bit pretentious.
February 21, 2018
A good discussion of creativity and the making arts. It's confusingly put together, and I could wish for a straight chronology rather than all the hopping back and forth in space and time. I can see why it was done that way (like the carvings themselves!) but still.
December 17, 2025
Felt as though this book started off well, lots of scope for exploring the practice of making/crafts and had some nice symbolism to go along with this. However the author just came across as a bit whiny and ultimately found the majority of this book quite dull.
August 26, 2015
This is a wonderful book. The author/artist does an amazing job of describing the process of making (as opposed to designing) something. He writes beautifully. Check his website for more photos of things described in this book and for pictures of his own amazing work.
This book describes copying a carving by Grinling Gibbons lost in the Hampton Court fire in the 90's. It makes me want to read the author's book on Gibbons. Can't wait for it to arrive! One thing that makes this book special for me is the fact that the author was inspired to take up woodcarving by seeing the Grinling Gibbons work at St. James Picadilly, a church dear to my heart.
If you have ever tried to be a "maker", however humbly, you will be inspired by this book. I'm so glad I read it.
This book describes copying a carving by Grinling Gibbons lost in the Hampton Court fire in the 90's. It makes me want to read the author's book on Gibbons. Can't wait for it to arrive! One thing that makes this book special for me is the fact that the author was inspired to take up woodcarving by seeing the Grinling Gibbons work at St. James Picadilly, a church dear to my heart.
If you have ever tried to be a "maker", however humbly, you will be inspired by this book. I'm so glad I read it.
March 28, 2019
A bit pretentious, self-absorbed. Some informative history concerning Grinling Gibbons; some good analysis of the process and technique of woodcarving; some thoughtful (many not) ruminations on the mystery of creativity; some apt (many not) literary references to Keats, Dante, Plotinus, Shakespeare. Just not enough material to merit a book. Started as a personal journal of the author's year restoring a fire-damaged carving at Hamton Court, the story is rather flimsy, insufficient for publication (IMHO).
Confusing and pointless flitting about between historical eras and narrative timelines
Confusing and pointless flitting about between historical eras and narrative timelines
July 2, 2013
A meditation on creativity, as the author recalls carving a new version of a lost carving for Hampton Court Palace. The process of creation is described, too--applicable to anyone who writes, plays music, or even gardens.
January 6, 2013
Reviewed this fabulous book on my blog:
Jilanne Hoffmann
Jilanne Hoffmann
June 30, 2017
"Thinking about wood carving, you think about the world. Well, I do anyway." (p. 28)
Esterly’s title includes the interweaving of his own journey with that of Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721), the great Dutch-British wood carver. At the surface it can seem Esterly is emulating Gibbons (or rather, as he says, his approach), but soon they appear to be walking alongside one another, with only a few centuries between them. Both arrived in England as outsiders.
"Our destination drew near, the island where lightening had flashed for me, years before, and where it had flashed for Gibbons, too: both of us new arrivals in a newfound land, where anything could happen and the future was malleable." (p. 32)
The book is bigger even than what Esterly calls the cultural bedrock activity of carving.
"Gibbons wasn’t the giant whose shoulder I was riding on. The giant was the act of carving, the profession itself: the making of a carving, the making of anything. Making itself. The Ancient of Days in all of us, the impulse to create." (p. 262)
Esterly teaches us about carving wood, the techniques, the history, the difficulty and the physicality of it. But his wonderfully crafted writing is also a treatise on the philosophy and process of making, and anyone with that Ancient of Days impulse to create will feel spurred on, and perhaps reassured. If you have ever had someone comment in a slightly patronizing tone that you are a ‘perfectionist’ because you take 30% more time to get that last one or five percent right, then The Lost Carving will inspire you to persist in leaving ‘good enough’ in the dust and in busting limitations, your own and others’.
I've noticed that some of the best writers are makers, perhaps because they bring the same approach to the pen as to their other tools. This was a joy and an inspiration to read, even though I have never carved a thing in my life.
For a full review, including a rich mosaic of quotations and metaphors, please visit: https://www.writingredux.com/reading/...
Esterly’s title includes the interweaving of his own journey with that of Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721), the great Dutch-British wood carver. At the surface it can seem Esterly is emulating Gibbons (or rather, as he says, his approach), but soon they appear to be walking alongside one another, with only a few centuries between them. Both arrived in England as outsiders.
"Our destination drew near, the island where lightening had flashed for me, years before, and where it had flashed for Gibbons, too: both of us new arrivals in a newfound land, where anything could happen and the future was malleable." (p. 32)
The book is bigger even than what Esterly calls the cultural bedrock activity of carving.
"Gibbons wasn’t the giant whose shoulder I was riding on. The giant was the act of carving, the profession itself: the making of a carving, the making of anything. Making itself. The Ancient of Days in all of us, the impulse to create." (p. 262)
Esterly teaches us about carving wood, the techniques, the history, the difficulty and the physicality of it. But his wonderfully crafted writing is also a treatise on the philosophy and process of making, and anyone with that Ancient of Days impulse to create will feel spurred on, and perhaps reassured. If you have ever had someone comment in a slightly patronizing tone that you are a ‘perfectionist’ because you take 30% more time to get that last one or five percent right, then The Lost Carving will inspire you to persist in leaving ‘good enough’ in the dust and in busting limitations, your own and others’.
I've noticed that some of the best writers are makers, perhaps because they bring the same approach to the pen as to their other tools. This was a joy and an inspiration to read, even though I have never carved a thing in my life.
For a full review, including a rich mosaic of quotations and metaphors, please visit: https://www.writingredux.com/reading/...
May 7, 2018
There are some beautiful passages in here about the cerebral component to creating art and the physical "call and response" the artist feels in the actual execution. I have never heard it described so eloquently. Esterly did an admirable job educating me about woodcarving and restoration work. I could have done with a little less about his attempts to mount an exhibition of the master carver Grinling Gibbons, some of which I suppose was necessary to show us Esterly's extreme devotion and dedication to his art.
October 3, 2021
A delightful book. I fell in love with Grinling Gibbons' work back in the 1950s. The awe of realising these intricate works were carved from wood remains with me.
This book gives, in largely stream of consciousness narrative, the journey of recreating items at Hampton Court Palace which had been destroyed by the 1986 fire. The author experiences some tussles with various authorities.
The writing is fluid and beautiful; a joy to read even without the content.
This book gives, in largely stream of consciousness narrative, the journey of recreating items at Hampton Court Palace which had been destroyed by the 1986 fire. The author experiences some tussles with various authorities.
The writing is fluid and beautiful; a joy to read even without the content.
May 24, 2021
This was recommended to me but beyond finding the life story of original carver, Grindley Gibbons, interesting, the story of recreating/restoring his Hampton Court carvings after the 1986 fire never quite gelled with me and I abandoned this. It didn't help that I found Esterly's prose unnecessarily flamboyant and pretentious, but I guess you either do or don't like that style of writing.
February 14, 2022
I started off by hating his style, but ended up really enjoying it. By the end it's still not 100% clear if the author is a good enough writer to make up for his disguised sense of self-importance, but the material (carving) is constantly fascinating enough to make up for it. Worth reading, especially if you're learning to wood carve too!
October 28, 2023
The subtitle is A Journey to the Art of Making, and it is truly a journey. It is hard to imagine an artist describing his craft in such details, as well as his thoughts and emotions during this creative endeavour. It's fascinating. But it is even more than that, because there is the historical interest of the project. David Esterly is a carver, a writer and a poet !
August 6, 2024
A real piece of craftsmanship. Rich with philosophical musings, gorgeous metaphor and sensory description that brought the carving process to life. I can see how some might not care for this flavour of prose, but I thought this was a beautiful way to get even a distant sense of a craft that could easily be lost.
November 12, 2022
Engaging account of the author's participation in the restoring of the carvings of Grinling Gibbons which were lost in a fire at Hampton Court. This is really a work of literature. As a beginning carver, I benefited from a number of the author's insights. I liked this book.
February 2, 2019
Esterly writes beautifully about a subject, chances are, you had no idea you could fall into completely.
March 12, 2022
interesting, wish that I knew more about the process of carving wood
November 25, 2025
An unenjoyable slog. Highlights in descriptions of carving and historical nuggets, but Esterly needed someone to rein in his self-indulgent habits. Tell the damn story, man.
January 26, 2026
Informative: 3
Reliability: 4
Writing: 3
Recommend to friends: 3
Reliability: 4
Writing: 3
Recommend to friends: 3
October 15, 2020
Beautiful writing!
This book reads like poetry. The descriptions of the interrelationships of carving and artistic expression of every kind make this a thoughtful examination of Art.
This book reads like poetry. The descriptions of the interrelationships of carving and artistic expression of every kind make this a thoughtful examination of Art.
November 5, 2015
Well-written, but a little flamboyant for my taste; the moving between seasons and locations and time wasn't as clear as it could be for the reader. Glad Esterly has built himself a profession that makes him happy, though he seems to gloat in it a bit more than I like, albeit unintentionally.
"Since a king would not wish to be disturbed by the tread of courtly feet above his grand chambers, Wren had filled the spaces between the floor joists with tens of thousands of small seashells, brought up from the Thames estuary by barge."
"You write about one thing only to find you're writing about something else."
"In the window of Ludgate Hill workshop he placed flowers carved so thinly that they trembled when carriages passed."
"The earplug-making machine was so loud that you had to wear earplugs while operating it."
"You need to introduce a series of selective exaggerations, which acknowledge the wood medium and render the leaf in that new language."
"They know what changes you have to make to a thing to make it look like itself, but in another medium."
"In the wrong soil, lime can grow up corky, granny, and grainy."
"defended from the injuries of Beasts, and sometimes more unreasonable creatures, till they are able to protect themselves." - Evelyn on lime trees.
"A sudden clarity to the air, colors uncanny and saturated."
"If a thing looks as if it was difficult to bring off then it hasn't been brought off."
"Birds flew into the window to try to peck at grapes painted by Zeuxis."
"When the wind tears off a bough in the forest, you can mark the wound from a distance by a splash of white."
"That would be my advice. Forget yourself. It will improve your work. Let the things you make proceed by their own design. When they cease to be an instrument for some other purpose, the shadowy leaves and blossoms and half-hidden stems that stretch out on your workbench will be their own luminous landscape."
"Who was in charge here?"
"If all you're conveying is the formal beauty of growing things, then doesn't that make you a kind of ice cream merchant?"
"You have to proceed as if the thing already exists."
"During the final undercutting, when the delicate lines and shadows emerge, a piece seems to grow tense with internal energy. As if a clock is being wound and the thing readied for the world."
"full cemeteries in the middle of nowhere."
"Now I can't think of those days without thinking of what happened afterward, how time picked out some things and made them part of the future, but turned its back on others, marooning them like a pasture wall in a forest."
"Sometimes moments in the past are so vivid that they seem to be happening in the present. Sometimes moments in the present have such haunting splendor that they seem to be happening in the past."
"Since a king would not wish to be disturbed by the tread of courtly feet above his grand chambers, Wren had filled the spaces between the floor joists with tens of thousands of small seashells, brought up from the Thames estuary by barge."
"You write about one thing only to find you're writing about something else."
"In the window of Ludgate Hill workshop he placed flowers carved so thinly that they trembled when carriages passed."
"The earplug-making machine was so loud that you had to wear earplugs while operating it."
"You need to introduce a series of selective exaggerations, which acknowledge the wood medium and render the leaf in that new language."
"They know what changes you have to make to a thing to make it look like itself, but in another medium."
"In the wrong soil, lime can grow up corky, granny, and grainy."
"defended from the injuries of Beasts, and sometimes more unreasonable creatures, till they are able to protect themselves." - Evelyn on lime trees.
"A sudden clarity to the air, colors uncanny and saturated."
"If a thing looks as if it was difficult to bring off then it hasn't been brought off."
"Birds flew into the window to try to peck at grapes painted by Zeuxis."
"When the wind tears off a bough in the forest, you can mark the wound from a distance by a splash of white."
"That would be my advice. Forget yourself. It will improve your work. Let the things you make proceed by their own design. When they cease to be an instrument for some other purpose, the shadowy leaves and blossoms and half-hidden stems that stretch out on your workbench will be their own luminous landscape."
"Who was in charge here?"
"If all you're conveying is the formal beauty of growing things, then doesn't that make you a kind of ice cream merchant?"
"You have to proceed as if the thing already exists."
"During the final undercutting, when the delicate lines and shadows emerge, a piece seems to grow tense with internal energy. As if a clock is being wound and the thing readied for the world."
"full cemeteries in the middle of nowhere."
"Now I can't think of those days without thinking of what happened afterward, how time picked out some things and made them part of the future, but turned its back on others, marooning them like a pasture wall in a forest."
"Sometimes moments in the past are so vivid that they seem to be happening in the present. Sometimes moments in the present have such haunting splendor that they seem to be happening in the past."
September 9, 2016
A friend recommended this book to me in the fall, but it took me several months to pick it up. Once it was in my hands, I devoured it. This book gave me everything I want in a good read. I became immersed in a subject (wood-carving) that I know nothing about; I learned about people, places and things that I don't encounter in my daily life and Esterly's writing was so good that I forgot that the "real" world exists.
Not that Esterly is making up his story. In 1986, there was a fire in Hampton Court. It destroyed artifacts that were valuable and irreplaceable. Wood-carvings by Grinling Gibbons were damaged, some beyond repair. Esterly was hired to copy one of the pieces that had totally burned up.
I vaguely remember that this fire had happened, but in 1986 my son was two and I had a new job. Why would I be interested in the results of this fire? Twenty some years later, Esterly writes about his experience and not only am I interested, but I get to accompany him on his journey through the process and I get to read his thoughts about making and craft. This was a fascinating read.
If you are interested in creativity, in the art of making or you just like a good detective story, I strongly urge you to pick up this book. Esterly is an amazing carver (see http://davidesterly.com/) and he is an excellent writer. Living in his world for 280 pages is well worth doing.
Not that Esterly is making up his story. In 1986, there was a fire in Hampton Court. It destroyed artifacts that were valuable and irreplaceable. Wood-carvings by Grinling Gibbons were damaged, some beyond repair. Esterly was hired to copy one of the pieces that had totally burned up.
I vaguely remember that this fire had happened, but in 1986 my son was two and I had a new job. Why would I be interested in the results of this fire? Twenty some years later, Esterly writes about his experience and not only am I interested, but I get to accompany him on his journey through the process and I get to read his thoughts about making and craft. This was a fascinating read.
If you are interested in creativity, in the art of making or you just like a good detective story, I strongly urge you to pick up this book. Esterly is an amazing carver (see http://davidesterly.com/) and he is an excellent writer. Living in his world for 280 pages is well worth doing.
April 3, 2024
Like other reviews have stated, this book is a "love it or hate it" type of writing. It was hard to get into- took me a week to get through the first twenty pages, but then I devoured the rest of it in one sitting. I ended up really loving the book, and his genuine passion for the craft. It details the trials, tribulations, joy, wonder, and obsession that goes into woodcarving. My main critique of the book is that the prose is just SO prose-y. If you're wanting a historical record or a description of technique in an objective way that most craft books are written in, this is not for you. Most of the book is comprised of complex metaphors and hyperbole and references to Greek philosophers, but it asks a lot of really good questions about the separation between body and mind, and how hand plays a part in Craft. Dude went to college for philosophy, and NEEDS you to know he's better than you for it. Talks down about art that is non-representational, or is different than what he makes. If you can get over that, it's a good read. More phylisophical than anticipated- which is never a bad thing to me haha! Lovely read!
August 15, 2013
I wonder if most people will love this book as much as I do--I'm interested in carving, though I'm a rank beginner, and I'm interested in Yeats, whose presence in the book is significant. I'm also interested in the value of making things, which is one of the themes here. Making things is, I think, one of the things that make us human ... and maybe the only positive thing that separates us from the other animals. I think a lot of things converge on this idea, including even the decline and impending (though not inevitable) fall of American society. We teach kids how to be entertained but don't show them the tools to make, to write, to plant, to build. I guess it's a short-sighted response to the present stage in the economic cycle, but from where I'm sitting, it's a symptom of a deep, serious illness.
The Lost Carving doesn't preach this sermon, though it drives by the church once or twice. It's worth your time, and its appeal is much broader than you might expect.
The Lost Carving doesn't preach this sermon, though it drives by the church once or twice. It's worth your time, and its appeal is much broader than you might expect.
October 3, 2013
This is a thoughtful and rich memoir centered around the experience of restoring famous carving work by Grinling Gibbons that was damaged in a fire at Hampton Court in England. Before reading this I did not know much about carving, and found myself astonished by what could be accomplished using simple lime wood. Esterly, besides being a skilled carver, is also an excellent writer who has a poet's touch for description and rather than creating a plodding history of restoration work, he instead moves deftly between various memories and reflections on the nature of carving and skillful work while enriching them with connections to Yeats and Plotinus among others. In a world often so focused on disembodied ideas, this book is a refreshing glimpse at the significance of embodied understanding that is forged at the workbench and a reminder of the simple earthly things that line our daily paths. Highly recommended.
January 14, 2013
I love all things Tudor and I especially love Hampton Court Palace, so when I saw this book had something to do with one of my favorite places I decided it must be read! David Esterly is a craftsman, a carver by trade, who has made some extraordinary pieces of art, so when a fire swept through some of the rooms of Hampton Court back in the 1986 and destroyed a few of the beautiful carvings of Grinling Gibbons, Esterly was tapped to restore and recreate some of these masterpieces. He spent over a year at the Palace and this book is an interesting tale of his carving career as well as his work at Hampton Court. I enjoyed it very much and it has made me aware of Grinling Gibbons and his beautiful work.
May 4, 2014
an enjoyable read about the authors year spent re-creating a celebrated carving by Grinling Gibbons, destroyed by fire at Hampton Court. A fascinating tale of what its like to work with wood,and the poetry Mr. Esterly creates with limewood and the flowers, leaves and buds so true you could smell them.
It also chronicles the challenges he faced along the way including the clashes with administrators at hampton court and english heritage. Why is it that such poor arts administrators always seem to rise to the top and the people who really care about the work don't even get an invitation to the ball. It's a puzzle that I have witnessed first hand on several occasions during my own career in arts administration.
It also chronicles the challenges he faced along the way including the clashes with administrators at hampton court and english heritage. Why is it that such poor arts administrators always seem to rise to the top and the people who really care about the work don't even get an invitation to the ball. It's a puzzle that I have witnessed first hand on several occasions during my own career in arts administration.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews