Carving History: The Life & Works of Andrew Currie

Andrew Currie (1812~1891) was more than just a gifted carver of large-scale monuments in stone and finely-wrought furniture in wood. He was also an enthusiastic antiquary, an oral historian, and a writer who penned colourful stories of life in the Borders of his youth. The son of an insolvent Selkirkshire sheep farmer, Andrew Currie was obliged against his will to take up a trade. He worked as a millwright until his mid forties, when his health broke. Only then did he become a sculptor, which had long been his dream. Despite his late start and the fact that he was completely self-taught, Andrew Currie managed to win prestigious public commissions in competition with much better qualified rivals. He was, by all accounts, quite a character. He was also, as it happens, my great-great-grandfather. This is a book in three parts. Part one is a biography of the sculptor’s life, Part two consists of illustrations of his works. Part three is a collection of his writings, including memoirs and diaries about growing up in the Scottish Borders of the early nineteenth century. The manuscripts came to light in 2011, having lain unread in a trunk in an Australian farmhouse for many decades. They are published here for the first time. “Bob Johnstone has written a fascinating biography of his ancestor, the Scottish sculptor and antiquary, Andrew Currie. Through painstaking detective work in many sources, a long-forgotten but interesting life has now been fittingly remembered and recorded.” — T.M. Devine, Professor of History at Edinburgh University and Author of The Scottish Nation

Bob Johnstone is a journalist and author. Born in Scotland, he currently lives in Melbourne, Australia. His previous books include We Were Burning, Never Mind the Laptops, Brilliant! and Switching to Solar.