Pavement artist

Later this summer, a similar project will be unveiled at Folly Park in Faringdon. When I visited Giles at his studio in South Newington, near Banbury, two piles of paving slabs, inscribed with poetry, were heaped near the entrance, awaiting collection and delivery.

"All of those segments form a circle, and it's got carved on it poetry that's been chosen by the local community," he explained."So it won't just be a boring old pavement, it will actually have something interesting on it!"

Not all of his work is local. One recent project, of which Giles is particularly proud, was a large slate opening plaque for St Ethelburga's Church at Bishopsgate in London, which was bombed by the IRA 15 years ago. The plaque was commissioned by the Burma Campaign Fellowship Group, and unveiled when the building was re-opened as a Centre for Reconciliation Studies.

Perhaps unusually, Giles came to carving from an academic background, his interest having been aroused while studying for a degree in Ancient History. "I studied Greeks and Romans, so that was my first interest in marble and carved lettering.

I trained as a stone carver, and then refined it down to just doing the letters.

"It is very purposeful doing lettering there is always a need for letters, on new buildings and memorials, and you can see the whole project through from start to finish. As a carver, you might just be doing something the architect tells you to do, whereas with lettering you actually design the thing from the beginning and see it right through."

Giles has been carving since the early 1990s, and undertakes a variety of commissions, from architectural lettering, which is carved directly into the face of a building, to gravestones, memorials, commemorative plaques and opening plaques. He is constantly busy, and disputes any suggestion that hand-carving is a dying craft.

"I think, certainly in the last ten years, there's been a revival. People have realised just what you can do when you carve naturally. A machine will just set it out and do it according to rule, irrespective of how it should be. But with hand carving you don't just carve, you design and shape the letters, so you can really respond to the place where the lettering's going. If you are carving on site, you make the lettering right for that architecture."

Talking to Giles, it is clear that aesthetic consideration is high on his list of priorities.

He has a very thoughtful approach to his work, which he sees as a natural progression from his academic studies. "It is a practical use of art or design in our everyday environment," he said. "I was always interested in how we affect our environment, and how that influences us.

"For example, if there is an inscription, we don't always stop and read it, but if it looks nice, even if we don't pay any attention to it, it just makes everything around look better, and you feel better. If everything around us is ugly, basic and mass-produced, it creates the opposite effect."

One of the ways in which Giles achieves beauty in his work is in his sensitive use of different materials, from sandstone and limestone to marble and slate.

"We're so lucky in this country that we are only a small island but we have so many different stones," he said, appreciatively. "And all different colours. You get really lovely yellow and gold Cotswold ones, green ones from Wiltshire and purple ones from Wales. It is the variety that makes it interesting."

You can see some of Giles's work during Artweeks at Knollbury, near Chadlington, where he will be displaying carved lettering in a garden setting.

"I think people respond to carved lettering," he said. "There is an increasing recognition of how interesting, visually attractive and sympathetic well-designed lettering can be."

For more information, call Giles Macdonald on 07713 231609, e-mail gilesmacdonald@aol.com or visit the website: www.gilesmacdonald.com