Thomas Aster

The sculptor whose severe memorial figures stand over the stations, courts, memorial gardens and restored bridges of the recovered cities, showing them what duty looks like in stone.

Thomas Aster works at monumental scale. His figures stand over stations, courts, memorial gardens and restored bridges, all broad shoulders, lowered heads and recovered tools, and they have given the recovered cities many of the severe images through which they imagine duty. Committees like him because his work communicates duty without requiring anyone to agree about theology. Younger sculptors complain that every public competition already contains an Aster before the entries are opened. At the other end of the market, where mourning becomes a luxury, stand portraitists such as Madame Léonie d’Aubrac; Aster works for the public square, and for the public purse.

He is said to insist on visiting every site at the hour when most people will pass the finished figure, and to shape its bearing to that light. His workshop is a place of hoists, chalk lines and very few words.

Companies meet his work more often than the man: the figure above a station they are watching, or a monument they are told to meet beside. When they do meet him, it is usually because several tons of stone must be moved across country without being dropped, stolen or argued over by a parish on the way.

In person

Thomas Aster is a large, powerful man with the build his trade demands, iron-grey hair swept back, a square grey beard and moustache, and a broad, stern, lined face with dark-grey eyes. His hands and forearms are scarred by stone. He wears a heavy work coat and apron over practical clothes, and is seldom far from chisels, mallet, callipers and lifting tackle.