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# Inside the studio of a stone carver
- URL: https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/inside-the-studio-of-a-stone-carver/
- Published: 2026-09-05T08:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-05T08:00:00.000Z
- Description: Mara Ionescu on patience, mistakes and why the last millimetre is always done by hand.
- Author: Julian Hart
- Tags: Interviews, #Import 2026-09-30 08:13

Mara Ionescu has carved stone for twenty-six years, in a converted barn in the Cotswolds with a view of a hill and a stack of limestone blocks taller than she is. She makes gravestones, garden sculptures and, once, a lion for a bank. I spent a day in her studio and asked her about patience, mistakes and why she never uses a machine for the last millimetre.

![Mara's tool wall: every chisel has a place and a name.](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/stone-tools-1.jpg)

Mara's tool wall: every chisel has a place and a name.

## How did you start?

"By accident. I was a graphic designer, and I did a weekend course in letter carving because I loved letters. On the Sunday afternoon I cut an A into a piece of slate, and it was the most satisfying thing I had ever done. A year later I had left my job. My parents thought I had lost my mind."

## What does a day look like?

"I start at eight with tea and a look at yesterday's work in morning light. Morning light is honest. It shows every mistake. Then I sharpen the chisels, which takes half an hour and is the most important half hour of the day. A blunt chisel bruises the stone. A sharp one cuts it cleanly."

> Stone forgives nothing, so you learn to forgive yourself instead.  
>  
> **Mara Ionescu**

![The last millimetre is always done by hand.](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/stone-chisel-1.jpg)

The last millimetre is always done by hand.

## Do you ever make mistakes?

"Every day. The difference with stone is that you cannot undo them. If you take off too much, it is gone. So you learn two things. First, you go slowly near the line: big tools far away, small tools near the finish. Second, when you do make a mistake, you change the design. Some of my favourite pieces have a curve or a leaf that exists only because I made a mistake there."

## Why not use machines?

"I do, for the rough work. A saw to cut the block, sometimes a grinder to remove a lot of waste. But never for the last millimetre. A machine leaves a surface that is perfect and dead. A chisel leaves tiny marks, and those marks catch the light. People think they are looking at the shape, but they are really looking at the light on the surface. That is the part a machine cannot do."

| Stage             | Tool                  | Time on a gravestone |
| ----------------- | --------------------- | -------------------- |
| Cutting the block | Saw                   | Half a day           |
| Roughing out      | Pitching tool, point  | One day              |
| Shaping           | Claw, flat chisels    | Two days             |
| Letters           | Small chisels, mallet | Three to five days   |
| Finish            | Rifflers, abrasives   | One day              |

![The quarry where Mara chooses her stone, block by block.](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/stone-marble-1.jpg)

The quarry where Mara chooses her stone, block by block.

## What is the hardest commission?

"Gravestones. Not technically — technically they are simple. But you are carving someone's name for a family who is grieving, and it will stand for two hundred years. I meet every family. We choose the stone together, and the letters. I want them to feel that the stone is theirs."

![](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/stone-sculpture-1.jpg)

![](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/studio-workspace-2.jpg)

![](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/stone-tools-1.jpg)

A garden piece in weathered limestone, the barn at midday and the tool wall.

## Advice for someone who wants to try?

"Take a letter-carving course. Letters teach you everything: sharp tools, patience, how light falls into a cut. And buy the cheapest mallet and the best chisel you can afford. The mallet does not care. The chisel does."

## Lettering, the heart of it

Letters are Mara's first love, and she still spends most of her time on them. Carved letters are cut in a V shape, and the V is what makes them work: one side of the cut catches the light and the other falls into shadow, so the letter reads clearly from almost any angle and in almost any weather.

She draws every inscription by hand at full size before she cuts it, adjusting the spacing by eye rather than by measurement. "Letters that are mathematically even look uneven," she explained. "An O needs to be a little bigger than an H, or it looks small. A space after an L needs to be tighter. Your eye knows. The ruler does not."

She showed me an inscription she cut twenty years ago beside one from last year. The newer letters are calmer, with less showing off. "When you are young you want people to see the carving," she said. "Later you want them to read the words."

💡

Many cathedrals and stone yards run weekend letter-carving courses for beginners. Tools and stone are usually provided.

#### How long does limestone last outdoors?

Good limestone lasts centuries. The letters soften slowly, which Mara says is "the stone taking the edge off, the way people do".