There was also a famous Party to Test the Influence of Drink on Work. Moore and Coxon covered their walls with blank paper and made a list of subjects sacred and profane. Each participant had a drink, drew a rectangle, numbered it, and drew a picture. Then he had a second drink and drew a second picture. Investigation the next day determined that most artists improved steadily through the fifth drink, and then deteriorated rapidly.
[ ... ]
In accordance with academic tradition, he was not supposed to do direct carving [ ... ] Moore was required to model in clay and then transfer the clay into stone by mechanical means [ ... ] Even Rodin’s marbles, for the most part, and most Renaissance sculptures, were executed by stone carvers using pointing machines to copy the sculptor’s model. A pointing machine is a framework which is attached firmly to the clay model and to the block of stone. The carver measures exact distances from the outside of the frame to the model, and transfers this exact distance by boring a little hole into the stone, to a depth equal to the point in the clay model. The executed carving has tiny pores in it, which reveal that a pointing machine has been used. Moore believed in carving and in truth to material; whatever was really stone should look stony, and wood woody. Therefore the idea of modeling something which was going to be stone was anathema [ ... ] Moore requested permission to carve it directly in marble. Permission was denied; Moore was to use a pointing machine for the carving, because otherwise he was certain to botch the job; no one could carve an accurate copy direct in stone. Moore convinced his own instructor (who would see him at work, the professor would not) to let him have a go at carving it direct. The result stands in Raymond Coxon’s house. It is a gracefully executed, conventionally beautiful Renaissance head, twenty-one inches high [ ... ] Its full title is Copy of the Head of the Virgin, and Moore copied it from the marble relief of the Virgin and Child by Domenico Rosselli in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Some critics, at least, find the Moore an improvement on the Rosselli [ ... ] It went against everything that Moore believed, except that he managed to carve it direct. The marble of the Virgin’s face is delicately pored with small holes which Moore added when he had finished the carving, so that it would look as if he had used the pointing machine. The professor of sculpture was pleased.
– Henry Moore by Donald Hall