{"id":663847,"date":"2026-10-24T07:40:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T07:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/663847\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T07:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T07:40:24","slug":"the-sydney-workshop-where-hundred-year-old-sculptures-are-made-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/663847\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sydney workshop where hundred-year-old sculptures are made new"},"content":{"rendered":"

Armed with a hammer drill and a cold chisel, Luke McDermott is carving a sandstone lion’s head to look exactly like it would’ve 127 years ago.<\/p>\n

The problem is the 127-year-old lion he’s trying to copy has no face: worn away by decades of erosion from air and rain.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Luke McDermott designed the new lion from old photos of lions and other sandstone lions. (Supplied: NSW Heritage Stoneworks)<\/p>\n

Instead, Mr McDermott will model the new lion, perched on a crown, using photos of both real lions and archival ones of sandstone lions from the turn of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

The work is painstaking and precise, as it needs to honour the original and hopefully last another 120 years, too.<\/p>\n

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The lion on the original coat of arms for the Darlinghurst Police Station has eroded. (Supplied: NSW Heritage Stoneworks)<\/p>\n

“The tricky stuff is redesigning a new lion’s face,” McDermott said.<\/p>\n

“Once the information is lost, it’s quite hard.<\/p>\n

“Then trying to get the crown and the lion together in a single carving can sometimes be a bit of a challenge.”<\/p>\n

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Luke McDermott uses fine tools like brushes to work on the lion’s head. (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

For six months, the NSW Heritage Stoneworks team has been working on the 127-year-old coat of arms that looks out to Taylor Square from the old Darlinghurst Police Station, which now houses the Qtopia museum.<\/p>\n

It’s far from Mr McDermott’s first rodeo, who’s a 17-year veteran of the Heritage Stoneworks that’s based in Alexandria in Sydney’s inner south.<\/p>\n

In 2023, he completed a large unicorn’s head for the coat of arms above the gates of the National Arts School, which is just across the road from Qtopia.<\/p>\n

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Luke McDermott designed the unicorn head without a reference image. The grey stonework will eventually weather to the same colour as the rest of the coat of arms.\u00a0 (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

Mr McDermott said this was more challenging because there was no reference image to work from, forcing him to use his creativity to complement the 1870s original.<\/p>\n

Halfway through the job, the team found a photo of the original. But because what he had made was so accurate, there was no need to start over.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Luke McDermott designed a model based on similar sandstone lions at the time. (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

“I started with nothing,” Mr McDermott said.<\/p>\n

“The fact that I had done a pretty good job considering the information that I had available to me \u2026 I was very happy with the result.”<\/p>\n

Schools, courthouses, fire stations<\/p>\n

More than 800 state-owned heritage sites are maintained by NSW Heritage Stoneworks, including old school buildings, courthouses and fire stations.<\/p>\n

Stonemasonry manager Peter Thurloe, who has been with Heritage since 1995, says some jobs are very large and geometric, like a courthouse, or very fine and artistic, such as the flora and fauna carvings at the Ultimo TAFE building.<\/p>\n

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Peter Thurloe has worked with Heritage Stoneworks for over 30 years. (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

There are about 4,800 stonemasons in Australia, according to the last census.<\/p>\n

Working with heritage buildings is one facet of the industry, which also includes housing construction, monumental stonemasonry and quarrying.<\/p>\n

Stonemasonry is on the federal government’s Australian Apprenticeships Priority List, which gives eligible full-time apprentices access to $10,000.<\/p>\n

\"Heritage<\/p>\n

The stoneworks help maintain over 800 government-owned heritage buildings around the state. (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

The government’s program also offers $5,000 to employers to encourage training apprentices.<\/p>\n

Mr Thurloe said attracting staff is a challenge. Apprenticeships take four years, and it’s difficult to compete with wages in the mining sector. Dust is also a major workplace hazard in the industry, something Mr Thurloe says is taken very seriously.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

The workshops see a range of jobs, some with fine carvings and others with a lot of geometric shapes. (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

He says there’s a unique satisfaction in the job because you are maintaining parts of the state’s history.<\/p>\n

“Once we have attracted people into an apprenticeship, they stay because it’s hugely satisfying,” Mr Thurloe said.<\/p>\n

“It has kept me happy for 30 plus years.”<\/p>\n

NSW Minister for Public Spaces Paul Scully said apprenticeships like those at the Heritage Stoneworks are creating stable opportunities for prospective stonemasons.<\/p>\n

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Paul Scully says the stoneworks offers stable employment. (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

“Stonemasonry often doesn’t come up in your list of your top five apprenticeships, but it is in demand,” Mr Scully said.<\/p>\n

“The Heritage Stoneworks team have a good connection with TAFE, making sure there are opportunities for apprenticeships.<\/p>\n

“This is good long-term work, looking after some of the most magnificent buildings that New South Wales has to offer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Armed with a hammer drill and a cold chisel, Luke McDermott is carving a sandstone lion’s head to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,281002,308,93,61,60,281003,280999,281001,281004,281000],"class_list":["post-663847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-darlinghurst-police-station-coat-of-arms","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-national-art-school-coat-of-arms","tag-nsw-heritage-stoneworks","tag-sandstone-stonemasonry","tag-stonemasonry","tag-stonemasonry-heritage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}