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is as if the human form is slowly evolv- cross-continental adventure can be traced
ing, buffed, polished and ready to go in the faces she carves – their androgy-
– return to these sculptures in several nous, elegant contours and simplicity of
thousand years and perhaps a fleet of form feel utterly archaic.
fully formed figures will have material- Five years ago, Emily left London again.
ised. The effect is similar to Michelangelo’s This time for good, setting up her home
Prigioni at the Accademia Gallery in and studio at the Convento di Santa Croce,
Florence; musuclar marble men appear an imposing golden block of a building,
to wrench themselves free from the stone flanked by lofty Cyprus trees. It is a seven-
they are carved from. teenth-century monastery that overlooks
Though she always had an interest in the hilltop town of Batignano and was
drawing and painting, it was by chance originally built to accommodate 21 friars.
that Emily became a sculptor in her The monastery has since undergone
thirties. ‘I had some slabs of marble left several incarnations. It was closed by
over from a kitchen work surface, and Napoleonic decree in 1805 and in the
somebody had left a little mason’s kit wake of the French invasion, an entrepre-
with a hammer and some chisels, I put neurial Frenchman turned it into a glass
the two together and loved it.’ factory (according to village lore his son
She is a product of her family’s glamor- was later murdered in a wage dispute).
ous brand of bohemia. Her grandmother Soon after it became an agricultural
Kathleen Scott, widow of the Antarctic estate and for a century was left to its own
IT IS AS IF THE explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott, devices, but by 1968, much of the building
was a sculptor in her own right, and a had been reduced to rubble. It was at this
HUMAN FORM friend of Rodin. Her father was the writer point that interior designer Adam Pollock

IS SLOWLY and politician Wayland Young, who would decided to leave London, where he’d been
take his daughter for long walks to see a mainstay of the Swinging Sixties party
EVOLVING, ancient stone circles of Avebury and circuit. He found refuge at Santa Croce,
POLISHED AND Stonehenge. And the sight of a 15-year-old and gradually restored parts of the
Emily dancing in a Notting Hill nightclub monastery back to its former glory.
READY TO GO so captivated Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd In 2011, Emily began renting from
that he immortalised her in the psyche- Adam, and when he decided to perma-
delic record ‘See Emily Play’. nently return to the UK in 2013, she
Aged 17, Emily packed her bag and left bought the property from him. The faded
THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP
her family home in London’s Bayswater noble setting couldn’t be better suited to
Emily in her outdoor work space.
to begin her travels to India: ‘I stopped her work. A beautiful, pearlescent onyx
Chiseling at the eye of a stone head.
Alabaster, lapis lazuli and jade on a table in Afghanistan for a long time – it was disc marks your arrival. It stands, like a
in her studio. OPPOSITE Located at the biblical, so beautiful and tough – and in vast planet, in the remaining arch of the
back of the building, Emily’s workshop is Iran, where the landscape was also wild church’s apse, now painted a striking
filled with machinery, tools and materials and untouched.’ Influences from this ultramarine blue. Emily sculpts largely
outside, overlooking Mount Amiata to the
east, with an indoor workshop at the back
of the building for finer work.
Though she does not prescribe to a
particular religion – ‘I can be a Buddhist,
a Hindu, or a Christian, all before break-
fast’ – her work is certainly at home in
sacred spaces. She has made pieces for
Salisbury Cathedral, the garden of St
Pancras Church and now, for the second
time, her sculptures are on show in the
Cloister of Madonna dell’Orto in Venice,
coinciding with the fifty-sixth Venice Bien-
nale, where it adds a much-needed dose of
gravity to the glitzy whirligig. A small slice
of quiet among the madness and a reminder
to stop and think just for a moment

Emily Young: emilyyoung.com
‘Call and Response’ is at Madonna dell’Orto
in Venice until November 22; faslondon.com

NOVEMBER 2015 HOUSEANDGARDEN.CO.UK