Helicoil (A triumph of vision over reality)

About five minutes into carving this piece, I managed to snap the top off the wedge-shaped block of stone from which it was made. I could have altered the design, but decided to glue it back together and carry on with the original idea.

 Over the course of the next couple of months that it took me to carve this piece, the repair that I had made necessitated particularly careful handling of the stone as I worked it, and the constant worry that the glue might fail lent an unusual edginess to the process.

 Rather than try to disguise the evident repair on completion, I left it in place as a visible reminder of stressful nature of the piece’s evolution.