Every so often we all down tools and take a day out of the studio with the aim of being inspired. We call this our ‘cultural day out’ and the brief is that we visit someone or something that is creatively stimulating but not directly connected with what we do. Previous ‘days out’ have included David Mellor’s cutlery factory in Hathersage and limited edition book publishers Incline Press in Oldham – both hard acts to follow. But our most recent excursion didn’t disappoint!

Yesterday we hooked up with Nick Roberson of Roberson Stone Carving. He arranged for us to have a behind-the-scenes tour of the fabulous John Rylands Library, a little known Mancunian gem which took ten years to build but apparently only two weeks to design! Nick’s knowledge and enthusiasm was enthralling – it was the incredible quality of the stonework here that first inspired Nick to become a stonemason. After our fascinating tour we all piled in to a minibus which took us back to Nick’s workshop. Here we learnt about the materials and techniques that Nick uses in his work and witnessed some of the beautiful projects that he’s working on at present.

In our computer focused world its very easy to loose sight of ‘craft’. Yesterday (and our other days out) serve to remind us why we were first inspired to become designers and keep us in touch with the true master craftsmen. Its their singularity of purpose and devotion to their craft that enables them to produce truly remarkable work.

Here’s Nick carving a Trajan letter ‘R’ for us. You can see the rest of our photos from the day here.