Replica Sculpture of the Lion of Chaeronea

The phone call came on a Sunday night. My wife handed me the phone because the man on the other end was so excited she couldn't follow him. I found my guy, he kept saying. He told me he had built his life around the story of the Lion of Chaeronea. He wanted a replica — not as decoration, but as a tribute to what it stood for." 

The original Lion of Chaeronea stands in Greece as a monument to the Sacred Band of Thebes — 300 warriors who fought to the last man at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. The lion was raised in their honour.

When I visited his house, he showed me exactly where the lion would sit. The garden was planned. A foundation would be poured. This piece already had a place waiting for it.

The quarry warned me that the block would be the absolute maximum they could remove from the hill. It wouldn't be tidy; it would be rough. When it arrived, it was taller than me.

My first thought was — what have I done?

We were only two years out from the earthquakes. Two years of aftershocks and waiting for the next jolt. Now there was a 2.25 metre block of stone in the yard. I quickly set up a grid and drew the out of the lion onto the block. The first cuts weren't artistic — they were practical. I needed to take the weight from the top. A large section came down with an almighty thud. I shifted it aside with my trusty Honda CRV. It was as much about management as vision.

Over the next eight weeks, the form slowly emerged. I worked around the entire block — chiselling, rasping and sanding. Two years after back surgery, it was also an exercise in pain management. Some days were long working days, others were done in intervals. Carve, rest with medication. Carve again. The lion was shaped in both strength and limitation.

Then, after eight weeks of sawing, chiselling, rasping and sanding, The Lion Of Chaeronea (replica) is complete and ready for delivery.

Preparing For The Road Trip

The initial delivery was by a hiab truck. It arrived at my house and the driver faced an immediate problem — the bolts of the wheels barely scraped through the drive because they had to navigate past two concrete pillars with only millimetres to spare. The guy strapped up the stone carefully, then picked it up. I had insisted the lion travel standing upright. 

When the hiab lifted it, and the lion hung there by those cables, my heart was in my mouth. But the truck driver was a true professional, every step of the way.

At one point during the journey, a couple in an old VW did a U-turn just to follow it down the street. When it arrived, the hiab lifted it over the fence as far as it could reach. Later, the crane with the boom picked up the lion and slowly carried it all the way out into the middle of the yard where its foundation was waiting. When it was finally lowered into place, the scale was undeniable.

The owner was proud of the lion. He told me he was happy with what I had created. And I was proud too — not simply because it was large, but because I had been entrusted with something that mattered deeply to someone, and I carried it through.

Someone once said that I am the lion. I don't think that's quite right. The project was bigger than me. It existed because a man devoted himself to a story and asked me to give it form. But after eight weeks of shaping it and living with it — part of me is in that lion, and part of it stays with me.

This was my Everest.