Guy Shaw loved a challenge - sometimes, it seemed, even to the point of
seeking to make the creative process as difficult for himself as he
could - so it is no surprise that he found his niche in the demanding
miniature art form of netsuke-carving. He was the favoured contemporary
Western carver of many who otherwise collected only the work of the
Japanese craftsmen of the 17th to 19th centuries who were the original
producers of netsuke (the elaborately carved toggles that historically
secured valuables and necessaries to the persons of pocketless Japanese
kimono-wearers). Although netsuke¹s practical purpose had dwindled
almost to nothing with the Westernisation of Japanese dress, he
continued to place himself under the constraint of making his pieces
wearable in the traditional way, sharing the design implications of
that with his oriental predecessors, just as he shared their blend of
craftsmanship, ingenuity, sense of humour and love of nature.

The challenge he gave himself in carving "Leviathan", a netsuke
depicting a large stag beetle exploring the inside of a chestnut
mushroom, was typical. "This is an example of a project that got out of
control to the point where realistically the only one who could
appreciate the lengths gone to is myself," he told visitors to his
website. "The gills of the mushroom would look just as good were they
carved to half the depth they are; the legs of the beetle did not have
to be carved so deeply inside the fungus; and it simply was not
necessary to carve around a blind corner under the beetle itself. And
yet I went to those lengths perhaps to explore the limits of the work
and to prove my own worth." Such perfectionism meant long hours of
solitary labour in his workshop, the candle burning at both ends as he
pored over the delicate details of the tiniest pieces, maybe 1.75in by
1.25in. But he was wrong if he thought his efforts went unappreciated,
especially by collectors who knew the difficulties of some of the
remarkable material in which he worked.

Having studied at both Bournemouth and Newport Colleges of Art and
Design, Shaw started as a painter of intricate pictures before
switching to jewellery and then, in 1978, suddenly deciding to carve
netsuke. This followed an evening spent with his wife Diana admiring a
neighbour¹s large netsuke collection, but the interest was in his
blood, a grandfather also having collected. He began without training,
carving pieces on a board on his lap, while sitting on a sofa in the
tiny cottage he rented with Diana in Berwick St John. As with his
Japanese precursors, his artistic subject-matter was all around him -
in his case, the snails and ants, leaves and feathers, shells and nuts
of the Wiltshire countryside.

In the humorous tradition of netsuke-makers, he added lurking spiders
and bustling ants as startlingly half-hidden extras, their delicate
structure and positioning within the body of the piece calling for the
highest levels of craftsmanship and patience. The spider, lying in
ambush inside one end of the rolled up battlefield groundplan of his
³Spider Map² netsuke caused so many people to drop this piece in fright
that eventually he had to make sure that anyone casually inspecting it
did so over a table. Ants were his scene-stealers of choice. Having
fairly easily passed off a piece of fossilised walrus tusk as a
chestnut, he typically gave himself the considerable difficulty of
adding an exploring ant, half exposed by the nut¹s partly open shell.
Such were the problems of carving a fragile insect¹s leg in that
brittle material that this particular job took more than two years to
finish. Every few months he would take it down from its resting place
and work on it for a few days before giving up in dismay and putting it
back.

Carving a pair of foraging ants inside his intricate reproduction of an
ornate wentletrap shell was another challenge. The delicacy with which
he undercut the ants so that only the tips of their legs were in
contact with the shell was all the more remarkable since they had to be
carved from the back towards the front to avoid damaging the front
parts while carving the back. "Accidents which happen this way lead to
a momentary yet a strong desire to shoot oneself", he told visitors to
the extensive and informative website, which - his own marketing man -
he created himself, using his own photographs. More than once a
problematic material like mammoth tusk, imported from the Siberian
permafrost, would split during carving and up to a week¹s work might be
lost.

Conservation laws having ruled out modern ivory for the contemporary
netsuke carver, Shaw worked in the most exotic and frequently
recalcitrant materials - hippo or cave-bear teeth, walrus or mammoth
tusk, even fossilised dinosaur dung (which, polished up, takes on all
the colours of the rainbow). Stag antler, too, is difficult to carve,
not that one would guess it from the feline energy and character of
"Catnip", his netsuke portrait of a rescue cat, tail aloft in an
undignified pose as it plays with a catnip mouse. His carvings were
designed to feel therapeutically good in the hand in the time-honoured
Japanese tradition, and ³Catnip² is among the loudest crying out to be
fondled.

An unusual subject for Shaw was his "Love Letters" series of netsuke,
depicting a bundle of correspondence, tied with ribbon, at the moment
when flames begin to catch the paper, crisping the edges to a curly
brown. The first of this series sold at one of many New York
exhibitions in which he took part, and Shaw treasured as testimony to
the power of the piece the tears in the eyes of a hard-bitten cop
guarding the exhibits who had previously made no secret of her immunity
to netsuke¹s charms.

Widely appreciated for his dedication, modesty and engaging sense of
humour, Shaw was well travelled, exhibiting regularly in the USA from
1987 onwards, as well as in Japan (becoming an authority on Japanese
mythology) and London (where he was the only contemporary carver to be
invited to show netsuke at Barry Davies Oriental Art). He had returned
from exhibiting in Russia only a few weeks before his sudden death.

Shaw was separated from his wife Diana, whom he married in 1977, but
the two remained on good terms. He is survived by her, by their
daughter Camilla and his stepson Jamie, and by his parents.

Guy Robert Hambleton Shaw, netsuke carver, was born on September 28,
1951. He died on October 9, 2003, aged 52.

Courtesy of The Times ( October 27th 2003) Author Sue Corbett

Guy R.H.Shaw
+44 (0) 1747 828 436
shaw.diana@virgin.net