Charcoal study by Gilbert Daykin, 1886-1939. 20" x 26½" over mount. "Ripping", 1937-1938. Leading hand hewing the narrow vertical cut into a seam face for breaking out or "ripping" a section. A skilled operation for the ordinary miner, it was important to keep the cut as narrow as possible as the fragmented coal from it was of no value. Mis-hits caused damaged hands and possibly sepsis.

Daykin worked as a miner at a pit near Sheffield and he produced a number of vivid artworks showing what the physical work of a coal miner was like down the pit. Sadly he was killed in 1939 in a mine shaft accident. Eleven artworks by Daykin were gifted by his family to the Science Museum in 1978.