My £100,000 silver tree sculpture for Omani royal (From Echo)

My £100,000 silver tree sculpture for Omani royal

4:00pm Thursday 2nd April 2009 in Search

A SILVERSMITH has been commissioned to create a £100,000 sculpture for royalty.

Christopher Lawrence, 72, has already sold several pieces in the Middle East and has now been asked to help create a frankincense tree for a member of the Omani royal family.

The award-winning artist will have the painstaking task of creating 3,000 individual leaves for a silver sculpture of the tree.

It will take more than one-year to complete and is set to be finished in November for the royal family in Oman, a small country on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula.

Mr Lawrence, who designs his sculptures from home in St Vincents Road, Westcliff, said: “The whole tree will take me 700 hours to do, as each leaf is unique.

“But I never ever get fed up of doing silver work, as I love the challenge of crafting it perfectly.

“I could work 80 or 100 hours a week, but that’s not very good for my health nowadays, so I do 40 instead.”

The silversmith’s previous pieces for the Omani royals have included a 14ft-high cake stand made of one tonne of silver and costing £850,000.

Mr Lawrence, who has been a silversmith for 56 years, won this year’s Goldsmiths’ Craft Council award for a large silver dish, which he completed last June. This was Mr Lawrence’s 29th Goldsmiths’ Craft Council award.

The dish was sold last September for £140,000.

Mr Lawrence, who is married with four children, added: “The competition was a real highlight.

“Normally, people have retired by my age.

“But you don’t give up a hobby, and I don’t want to stop because it’s so much fun.”