Biography
John Bunting was born in London on August 3rd 1927, the only son of a successful tea broker from the City of London. Having been sent to prep school in Kent, he was evacuated to Yorkshire in 1939 and sent to the Benedictine Monastic School at Ampleforth College.
His curiosity as to the origin of the trademark mouse on the furniture throughout the school, soon took him the six miles to Kilburn, where he met Robert Thompson, the mouseman.
He left school in the winter of 1944 and went up to Oxford, prior to National Service with the Royal Marines in 1946 and 1947. In January 1948, he returned to Kilburn, to serve a 12 month apprenticeship in Robert Thompson's wood shop.
Taking the advice of Henry Moore, whom he visited in his studio in Much Hadham, in April 1948, he went to St Martins and from there to the Royal College of Art in 1950. In 1954, he won a travelling scholarship to Spain from where he visited Beni Abbes, a hermitage in the Sahara.
In 1955, he returned to Ampleforth College, where he was appointed Master of Drawing and, in his later years, artist in residence until he retired to his studio in Nunnington, where he worked until his death in 2002.
He taught life drawing at York Art School for nearly 40 years and was commissioned to carve numerous private and public works predominantly throughout Yorkshire.
