The Mystery of the Nightingale’s Figurehead

Just over twelve years ago in the Swedish countryside just outside Gothenburg a local Antiques dealer and his friend made a remarkable discovery, a local farmer had what he called a scarecrow for sale, and would they be interested in buying it, the dealer was Karl-Eric Svardskog his friend Gunter, the scarecrow would turn out to be a beautiful Ships Figurehead in the form of a young woman, a deal was made with the farmer, leaving Karl-Eric and Gunter to make the arrangements to move her out of the farmers barn, back to Karl-Eric home in Gothenburg, once this relatively short journey had been made, a more complex and arduous journey of research and discovery would occupy Karl-Eric for the next decade or more, a journey he is still on.

In the late summer of 1999, at a workshop in the South Devon village of HOLSWORTHY near Exeter, the culmination of just over five and a half months of arduous and hard work was coming to a satisfactory conclusion, Richard Barnett a local Devon woodcarver with an International reputation and gift for carving the unusual, was putting the finishing touches to a vast replica figurehead for the British Naval Frigate HMS TRINCOMALEE under restoration at the Jackson Dock, Hartlepool in the North East, few carvers in the World are fortunate enough to be given such a fascinating and in many ways unique opportunity to demonstrate an almost lost skill and art, as to replicate a figurehead of this size and importance.