{"id":519765,"date":"2026-03-05T06:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T06:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519765\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T06:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T06:57:10","slug":"stonemasons-win-snow-sculpting-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519765\/","title":{"rendered":"Stonemasons win snow sculpting competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Red<\/p>\n

The team sculpted a kraken eating a ship<\/p>\n

Two stonemasons have won a snow sculpting prize as part of Team GB’s entry to the World Snow Festival in Switzerland.<\/p>\n

Sheffield sculptors Lily Marsh and Steve Roche were part of Great Britain’s four-person team, which won the public vote and came third in the technical judging at the competition in Grindelwald.<\/p>\n

They competed against 10 nations with the Spanish team taking first place in the technical category.<\/p>\n

Sculptor Lily Marsh said it was “refreshing” to swap stone for snow. “Normally it’s very dusty and it’s much quicker to move the materials so I really enjoyed it,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

The team of four was led by sculptor Christine Close<\/p>\n

The team – led by Christine Close, a sculptor based in France – carved a kraken eating a boat as part of the myths and legends theme set by the competition organisers.<\/p>\n

They worked with a large block of snow, starting with a small model.<\/p>\n

“We used big chisels on the end of broom handles. A bit like gardening hoes. You use those to stab at it and shave stuff way,” explained Roche.<\/p>\n

“And we used a length of chain that had nuts and bolts set in it with two handles at the end like a big chain saw to carve off the really big bits that we needed to get rid of at the start of the design.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The team came first in the public vote and third in the technical judging<\/p>\n

Despite the low temperatures, Roche said the work kept the team warm.<\/p>\n

“I was working in a T shirt most days. I was moaning it was too warm. I got sunburned. I had to go to the shop to get sun cream because it was so bright,” he said.<\/p>\n

After the judging, sadly the sculptures did not last and were left to melt in the snow, said Marsh.<\/p>\n

“It’s quite a liberating thing because often you can get precious about the stuff you make or get worried about it not being good enough and actually it’s quite a good practice to make something and know that it’s definitely going to melt. It releases you from that worry a bit.”<\/p>\n

Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds<\/a>, catch up with the latest episode of Look North<\/a><\/p>\n

Related stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The team sculpted a kraken eating a ship Two stonemasons have won a snow sculpting prize as part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134,259505,259506,259504],"class_list":["post-519765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-lily-marsh","tag-snow-sculpting","tag-steve-roche"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}