Darsie Rawlins

Painstaking ecclesiastical sculptor and letter-cutter in the Arts and Crafts tradition

Darsie Rawlins, sculptor: born Kentmere, Westmorland 27 March 1912; married 1940 The Hon Rachel Irby (two sons, two daughters); died Oxford 28 January 2003.

Because he sculpted mainly to commission rather than exhibiting in galleries, Darsie Rawlins does not have a wide reputation. His main focus was ecclesiastical sculpture, alongside some fine secular commissions, while his skill as a letter-cutter was in the finest English Arts and Crafts tradition.

He was born in 1912 in Kentmere, Westmorland, to artistic parents. His father, George, and mother, Magdalen, both attended Liverpool School of Art and became silversmiths. Darsie acquired his unusual first name from the artist Darsie Japp, a contemporary of Stanley Spencer's at the Slade, who with his family is the subject of a portrait by Henry Lamb in Manchester Art Gallery.

George was studying in the Department of Physics and Chemistry at Liverpool University, planning to join the family business manufacturing ultramarine blue pigment, before he met Magdalen Hoyer, from a Norwegian shipping family. George retained a strong underlying scientific- inventive side. He invented a photographic printing method known as the oil process in which individual artistic ability is a key element.

Darsie's hard-up parents enrolled him at Bembridge School on the Isle of Wight, moving to the island as they could not afford boarding fees. Darsie made some good friends there, including the future architect John Brandon-Jones and the painter Adrian Beach, and acquired a lifelong love of the sea. He cruised regularly with a schoolfriend. Later, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, remained a keen reader of nautical books and even in old age could sketch accurately all types of rigging.

His parents were keen to see their cherished only child become a sculptor. The Royal Academy Schools were rejected, "because their subterranean studios were reckoned not light and airy enough", recalls his daughter Christina, and instead he went to the Royal College of Art. Rawlins was there from 1930 to 1934, with the dynamic Sir William Rothenstein as Principal.

Rothenstein's aim was to give students "the best possible general education through the arts", enhanced by the informal opportunity to meet famous academics, poets, novelists and politicians who would be invited to the students' common room. Rawlins's fellow students came from a wider social circle than he had known. Of the painter Vincent Lines, he later remarked that he was "one of the few students who spoke properly". Henry Moore, as a visiting teacher of sculpture, left a lasting impression. He told Rawlins: "Break all the rules, but learn them first."

After his studies, Rawlins set up studio in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, to which his parents had moved so that he could commute to the Royal College. He began to get commissions from friends, such as the town planner Patrick Abercrombie, and showed at the Royal Academy.

In the Second World War Rawlins served at sea with the RNVR in Coastal Command. Later he spoke little of his service. The family still has a piece of shrapnel with a chunk of surrounding deck, part of a shell fired from France at Dover Harbour while Rawlins's ship was moored there. After the war he remained a reservist as long as his age allowed.

In 1940, Rawlins married Rachel Irby, daughter of Lord and Lady Boston, by whom he was to have two sons and two daughters. They settled in Penn, Buckinghamshire, where he based a burgeoning sculptural career. Rawlins also taught at High Wycombe College of Art, although one of his students, the sculptor Peter Foster, recalls that he was relieved when he was able to leave teaching. Foster was Rawlins's assistant for a time:

He had his own method of modelling in clay, to which he brought a very disciplined, technical approach. I helped him lettering headstones, of which he did a great number, guiding me and trusting me to know what to do. He set me up for the rest of my life. He took immense trouble to do a good job. You don't get that quality very often.

Although he did not meet the sculptor and letterer Eric Gill, Rawlins owed much to his work ethic. He was friendly with the painter, printmaker and illustrator Denis Tegetmeier, who was married to Gill's daughter Petra, and the sculptors Lawrie Cribb and John Skelton, who had both learned from Gill. Gill had been a leading figure in the Art Workers' Guild, of which Skelton was Master for a time, and Rawlins joined it in 1970. He had joined the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1947, was made a Fellow in 1961 and served as Treasurer from 1973 to 1976.

Rawlins worked with another Guild member, the architect Sir Edward Maufe, on extensions to Holy Trinity, Penn, where he was a regular worshipper. He also cut headstones to designs by his friend the glass engraver Laurence Whistler. In his sculpture and as an Anglican Rawlins was a traditionalist, abhorring modern versions of the Prayer Book. The 1662 version was used at his funeral.

He was a slow and painstaking worker, in his studio seven days a week. Although he mainly cut in stone, he also used wood, bronze and bronze resin. Notable sculptures by him are to be found at Denbighshire Technical College, Wrexham; Gloster Aircraft Company Memorial, Gloucester Cathedral; Hampshire County Offices, Winchester; Princesshay, Exeter; the Royal Tank Regiment Memorial, St Peter-upon-Cornhill; Staines Municipal Offices; and Tewkesbury Abbey.

David Buckman