The next Michelangelo is tucking into a tray of fast food. Beside him, the glazed eye of a half-finished horse’s head gazes blankly across the centuries. If it wasn’t for the slightly greasy, mouth-watering smell of instant lunch, you could be forgiven for thinking you had stepped into a time warp.

The young artist sits among the marble dust and chaos of the workshop just as the Florentine Buonarroti would have done in Giovanni Bertoldo’s academy of sculpture in 1489, surrounded by white, muscular torsos and hundreds of chisels, living and breathing the cool, earthy odours of stone and wood.

Andrian Melka is an unlikely High Renaissance man. He is dressed in a well-worn open-neck shirt and jeans caked in dust. The Malham streak in his slicked-back hair and round, modern glasses make him look more like Mark Lamarr than Michelangelo.

Yet his mentor Dick Reid, whose work is sold around the world and whose carving on the memorial to Diana, Princess of Wales, at Althorp is seen by millions, is firmly convinced that Andrian has something far greater than talent in his blood.

“He has something special. You can’t quite put your finger on it but it makes him stand out from the rest. Andrian has a fire in the belly which drives him to work. No matter what happens he will carve.

“All the people in my workshop have a talent and a determination, but every so often - and very rarely - you find someone like Andrian who has something extra. He is the second Michelangelo. I have no doubts about that.”

Albanian-born Andrian has drawn since he was four and had his first commission at nine. He received a Getty scholarship and came to England to learn masonry, selling his first work to Lord Rothschild and his second to Prince Charles. The rest of the world is yet to recognise the prodigy in their midst, but Andrian is in no hurry. Like most stonemasons, he has the patience of a saint.

He is also working with one of the finest mentors in the world, albeit from a studio hidden away in an alley just a stone’s throw from York city centre. The studio is Dick Reid’s living legacy, the realisation of his dream to create a workshop just like the ones frequented by the old Italian Masters, where young apprentices learn all their skills under one roof.

I had to ask a neighbouring butcher where it was. There is no plaque on the red door and no indication of the treasures beyond. Yet when you step from the sunlight into the cool, vast interior, walking between sentinels of semi-nude figures, angels and eagles to reach his haphazard office, you know you have entered an extraordinary place.

There is a quiet energy encased in the tributes and monuments, statues and huge plaques, which have been lovingly carved by Dick Reid’s hand-picked team of disciples. He is acutely aware that they are all there on borrowed time.

“There was a phase where no-one wanted to be a craftsman,” he said. “The education system is not geared towards teaching people these kind of skills. But a lot of people are realising that that there is a huge amount of job satisfaction to be gained through something like this and I believe that if you are determined enough to do something, you will do it.

“When I take people on in the workshop I look for those with a burning desire. I believe it takes five years to learn how to carve and another five to prove to yourself that you can do anything thrown at you. A lot of people want to come and learn how to carve, but I am not a school. I am just a senior craftsman with a team of people working together.”

Few places draw as many students with that “burning desire” as York College, one of six training centres in the UK to teach the two main strands of stonemasonry. Along with colleges in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bath, Weymouth and the Building Crafts Training School in London, York College offers an NVQ level 2 course in which students learn hand carving, power tool techniques and geometry.

By taking their vocation to NVQ level 3, the highest craft award available, students can go on to take further training in conservation. Other strands include fixing, monumental stonemasonry, new build stonemasonry and sculpture.

Course lengths vary. Full-time courses are aimed at those entering the industry, including those changing careers in mid-life. With work placements, they can achieve level 2 or 3 within two years.

Students who already have an apprenticeship will take a one-day a week course over three years to achieve the highest qualification, while others are sponsored by the Construction Industry Training Board on block-release courses.

“Stonemasons are a breed apart,” said Kevin Calpin, professional lecturer at York College. “You have to really want to do it, but those who do usually find work at the end of their course. The percentage of students finding employment, either in the construction industry or within a Cathedral workshop, is very high.”

Few follow the steps of Newcastle-born Dick Reid who, at 16, took a traditional apprenticeship with the architectural carver and sculptor Ralph Hedley. He later set up shop in York, where he was stationed during National Service, living on a “bicycle” income when he “used to go and talk to the WI for pound;5 and my wife made my shirts”.

But word of his unusual skills gradually spread. An introduction to Bridlington-based architect Francis Johnson opened a host of new and highly influential doors, and before long Reid’s name was synonymous with some of the greatest restoration projects in recent history, including Lord Rothschild’s pound;17 million renovation of Spencer House which involved a 22-strong team over three years, the restoration of Windsor Castle (a personal letter of thanks from the Queen hangs between curly-edged photographs and yellowing magazine clippings on the stairway), and a pound;1m ceiling at Chatelherault, the Duke of Hamilton’s house in Scotland.

As well as stone carving, wood carving, gilding and cabinet making, Reid and his team make patterns for the plastering and cast-stone trades, keeping ancient modelling skills alive at a time when they have died out elsewhere.

Only recently they worked on carvings for singer Enya’s Irish castle and a marble chimney piece for an American millionaire. A pound;20,000 four-poster bed for Mrs Frick in New York and another chimney for newspaper proprietor Conrad Black’s Miami mansion have also been neatly dispatched from the “studio with no name”.

“You cannot take away the joy of doing it,” says Reid. “I am a doer. My wife will certainly tell you I am not a thinker. I am a workaholic and I have been all of my life. Sculpture never ends.”

But Dick Reid’s workshop might. He is past retirement age and showing no signs of slowing down. His untidy office, with its files and contacts books reading like the Who’s Who of the world’s rich and famous, is piled high with commissions and work pending. His team of craftsmen are young and ambitious and eager to carve their own independent careers.

His sons are earning too much money in the city to want to take on their father’s legacy. “It’s very sad because there’s a lot of collective knowledge here, but you cannot force people to work together. It has to come from within,” he says.

“So one day the workshop might close, but if I have managed to create just a handful of the next generation of sculptors then all of this has been worth it. At heart, I’m just a humble craftsman doing his job.”