Arms and the Man

Someone who has managed to put this disarmingly simple-sounding formula for a successful career into practice is Fergus Wessel.

Mr Wessel, 39, is a stone carver with a workshop in Milton-under-Wychwood, who loves his craft and believes in never hurrying his work — instead simply beavering away diligently until the job is done to the best of his ability.

“Never hurry. The moment you hurry you are in a mess,” he tells his only employee, formerly his apprentice, James Sheppard.

“It does not matter if it takes all day as long as it is perfect."

He added: "Jazz on the radio, coffee, and cats. Those are the things we like here.”

For a journalist with a tight deadline hanging over his head, bustling into this haven of almost zen-like peace was like walking into another world — although Mr Wessel admitted, calmly enough, that creating that world had not been easy.

He said: “The first two years were tough and I almost gave it up."

The problem was that potential customers, wanting such things as memorials or headstones, or finely carved plaques, or heraldic devices, naturally went to stone carvers with a proven reputation rather than to a complete unknown.

As a result, starting up was not easy — until Mr Wessel had a brainwave.

He explained: "I wrote to the College of Arms to find details of people who had been recently granted the right to have coats of arms or crests.

“Then I wrote to those people telling them: 'I will carve it for you in return for using your name on my client list.”

Slowly the commissions came in.

Among those who responded were newly elevated lords and some TV personalities, including gardening guru Alan Titchmarsh, a copy of whose heraldic device — consisting of a lion with a spade — adorns the walls of Mr Wessel's workshop.

Now he has had another marketing breakthrough thanks to the twin powers of television and social media.

His business was in November selected by Theo Paphitis of BBC TV programme Dragons’ Den as one of his small businesses of the week — which meant his stone carving activities, profiled on www.theopaphitissbs.com came to the attention of Mr Paphitis’ 260,000 followers and resulted in 150 more hits for Mr Wessel's own website: www.stoneletters.com Mr Wessel said he would advise anyone looking for a treat from Mr Paphitis to tweet him on Sunday in the hope of seeing their business similarly featured on his exclusive Small Business Sunday winners’ website.

He added: “This is a real boost for small business. Having been working on my own for ten years now, it is good to gain recognition from someone like Theo."

But how did Mr Wessel discover he had a talent for stone carving in the first place, and how did he develop that talent?

He said: “To some extent art and design were in the blood because my father was a maker of harpsichords and flutes, and my mother is quite a well-known typographer and wood engraver, Mary Macgregor, who lives across the border in Gloucestershire at Whittington.”

He added that after leaving St Edward's School, Cheltenham, he became a potter, working for the Winchcombe Pottery.

He said: "Then I got tired of being wet, cold and skint, which is the lot of a potter, and a guy there suggested letter cutting.

“I tried it and loved it. I thought I would apply to get into the Kindersley Workshop in Cambridge as an apprentice — even though I was told I would never get in because it is the best in the world. But I did and worked there from 2001-2004.

"At the end of my apprenticeship they asked me to stay on but I declined because I did not want to be doing stone cutting all the time. I also wanted to design and meet clients. I wanted to incorporate my work life into the home."

In other words, be independent. And that he has certainly achieved. Only a garden separates his workshop from his house, newly restored with stone, where he and his wife Hannah and five children Evie, 11; Arthur, 9; Laurence, 6; Ralph, 4; and one-year-old Myrtle all live.

About 60 per cent of his work now comes from carving headstones (which gives him a perpetual and philosophical feeling of the shortness of life) but recent commissions in Oxford have included carving the Wadham College coat of arms over the restored Holywell Music Room, reputedly Europe's oldest concert hall, dating from the 1740s.

That involved some carving "in the round" which he is well able to do even though his main love is stone lettering in 2D rather than 3D.

In this he is to some extent following in the footsteps of one of the greatest stone carvers of all time, Eric Gill (1882-1942), who did a lot of work in Oxford, including the remarkable memorial in New College to members of the college who died in the First World War on the German side — and whose pupil, David Kindersley, founded the Kindersley Workshop in Cambridge.

Mr Wessel did not divulge turnover figures but he has just completed a plaque for Charterhouse School commemorating its 400th anniversary and will shortly start work on a war memorial for the school too.

He has also recently completed carving new lettering at the entrance to the Royal Albert Hall, which the Queen and Prince Philip inspected at the Hall's Festival of Remembrance last November.

All in all it seems there is still strong demand for the work of highly skilled craftsmen, even in this digital age.