A carpenter has been urged to shut up shop and turn his workshop into a place of pilgrimage - after discovering the face of Jesus peering back at him from a kitchen cupboard. Furniture maker Mat Askham was putting an oil-based finish on the inside of a cupboard he'd been working on when he spotted the face of the son of God staring back at him from the knots in the wood. The 51-year-old was putting the lacquer onto the ash double-door shaker cupboard to 'lift' the detail in the grain on Thursday when the face emerged.
A striking image of the Christ-like face shows clearly-defined eyes, a nose, moustache, beard and trademark flowing locks. Mat, who specialises in bespoke kitchens, immediately took a snap of the six-inch tall holy visage and sent it to family and friends who were stunned by the likeness. The dad-of-two said the discovery was even more bizarre given that minutes prior he'd spent half an hour catching up with a Christian pal.
One mate was so chuffed by the find that he jokingly suggested he should shut his business Peck & Chisel down and start charging folk to visit the site. After sharing the snap on social media it went viral, racking up more than 1,300 likes, shares and comments. Mat, from Exeter, Devon, said: "I've had the piece of ash sat looking at me in my workshop for quite some time. I'm making a kitchen for someone and it was only when I applied an oil finish on it, to lift the detail in the grain up, that it mysteriously appeared in front of me.
"I thought, 'oh my God look at that, there's a face staring at me'. It looked at me, I looked at it and I had to take a photograph of it straight away because it was just so funny. It's really quite bonkers. You can see two eyes, a nose, a bit of a moustache and a goatee. The ears are hidden by the hair down the side.
"It's creepy that my very Christian friend came to see me, we chatted for half an hour chewing the fat over the last 20 years and then five minutes later I discovered the face of Jesus in a kitchen unit. These things don't happen every day. A friend of mine said 'shut the business down, set it up as a shrine, start charging people to come in'.
"My partner Nicola messaged me on WhatApp to ask 'have you discovered Jesus?' It's ludicrous really, but it's incredibly funny. People can't stop laughing at it." Since sharing the religious lookalike online, Mat's post has been flooded with people agreeing on the likeness - but also suggesting the face looks like William Shakespeare, Chewbacca and even Bigfoot.
Mat said: "Lots of people have commented on it, you can interpret it in lots of ways. It could be 'Jes-ash', it's quite Chewbacca-y, and some have said it looks like William Shakespeare but I immediately thought it was a cross between Jesus and a hound dog. The face is now in a double-door shaker cupboard. Every time the customer opens this door this face is going to be staring at them. They don't know anything about it yet."
Mat shared the picture on Facebook with the caption 'Found him on a bit of ash today'. Thrilled social media users shared comments, agreeing that it did look like Jesus, and all other manner of hairy creatures. One wrote: "That's Jesus."
Another commented: "Well he was a carpenter." One wrote: "Finally people will believe that Chewbacca is real." Others shared pictures of William Shakespeare and Bigfoot as they thought it looked more like them.
