Edward Carter Preston's Figurehead of Admiral Nelson

The author examines the Modernist sculptor Edward Carter Preston’s carved ship figurehead of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (1938). Commissioned for HMS Nelson, a Royal Navy Cadet Training Ship, this representational figurehead was made by laminating together layers of teak rather than by carving into a solid block of wood. The author argues that this was an innovative solution to technical difficulties and indicates an earlier precedent in the sculptor’s oeuvre for this technique when he constructed satirical sculptures out of laminated plywood during the First World War during a time of austerity