AWARD-winning sculptor, artist, and musician Tad Mandziej, who made his home in West Somerset for more than 50 years, has died aged 84 after a long illness.
Renowned as one of the country’s most gifted and successful woodcarvers, his commissions, carried out in an ancient barn next to his Williton home, varied from eight-foot high doors for a royal mausoleum to tiny military figures for the Imperial War Museum carved under a magnifying glass.
Remembering him this week, friends listed some of Tad’s other talents, including natural philosopher, language interpreter, accomplished folk musician, and martial arts teacher.
He was also a nephew of the Polish Pope John Paul II.
The route to West Somerset had been long and traumatic.
Born in a freezing hut on a Caucasian mountainside shortly after his Polish mother escaped a Siberian labour camp in 1940, Tad travelled with her and his brother on a gruelling eight-year trek, mostly on foot, to England via the Middle East and Africa.
They were homeless and penniless, dependent on the kindness of strangers for food and shelter, and Tad nearly died from malaria and rheumatic fever.
In an interview he recalled: “We were hungry most of the time but we never gave up hope of getting to England.
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“In Pakistan, we were nearly starving and my brother was arrested for taking sweetcorn from a field but we managed to get away.
“In Africa, all our possessions were eaten by termites.
“We were put in a mud hut for the night and later warned that we were in the path of a column of soldier ants.
“We got out and they just marched straight through the place.
“In the morning all my mother had left in the world was the metal clasp from her handbag.”
Eventually arriving in the UK, Tad completed what was left of his childhood in Hampshire and started carving by accident while teaching textile design at Nottingham College of Art, before finally arriving in West Somerset.
In the late 1970s, Tad found his way into the world of competitive carving and became a regular judge and participant at the world’s largest carving contests, regularly winning international and European competitions.
His last winner, which he described as ‘a knight on horseback with a slave-girl in tow’, landed a $10,000 first prize and went on sale for $15,000.
A legendary figure among wood-carvers, Tad travelled the world on eclectic commissions ranging from four sets of teak doors, for the mausoleum built for the English wife of King Hussein of Jordan, to rose-festooned fountains in a palace in Oman.
Still carving, painting, and drawing in his late seventies, Tad regarded West Somerset as his spiritual as well as his geographical home.
He said: “I love the countryside and the wildlife and particularly the plants.
“One thing I never tire of is carving a mushroom brought home from an Exmoor field on a summer morning.”
Tad leaves a wife, Brenda, and many friends. His funeral will be at Nettlecombe in late October on a date to be arranged.
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