• Finials and side crockets, for Eusebius and Dom Church

    Dom Church, Utrecht, Eusebius, Latest projects, Restoration
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    finials in Muschelkalk for St. Eusebius's Church

    Finials for St. Eusebius's Church

    We are working on the completion of three projects: the first half of St. Eusebius's Church in Arnhem (the Netherlands) is almost finished, the last pieces of St. John's Cathedral are completed, and the last crockets for the South Chapel of the Utrecht cathedral are packed and ready for shipping as well. The finials in the above picture are destined for the south side of St. Eusebius's Church. These are fairly simple crockets in French Massangis-limestone, with a post-war era design, but they will contour well with their clean lines. There are only a few of those, and it's indent work: damaged finials and crockets are cut out from the surrounding stone and a new one is inserted at that spot. Tuesday 19 February, I was on the scaffolding at the church to carve another few of these crockets on site. Always fun, about visit to the scaffolds.

    My own pieces were not yet inserted into the church walls, at the corbel of "The Night’ that I carved recently, but it was still completely enclosed between the scaffolding planks. Stides heads in Muschelkalk, however, were clearly visible, a joy for the eye.

    Jelle and I started the morning there with measuring the next batch of 7 flying buttress figurines as well. Unfortunately many of them were seriously damaged. I hope they do not need too much work before they can serve as a model for their copies!

    Tuffstone side crockets for the Utrecht cathedral

    old side crockets ready for transport- a beaten-up collection

    The latest side crockets for the Utrecht Cathedral are now ready for transport as well here. It was a fun project: 29 side crockets in tuffstone for the South Chapel, on the side of the inner courtyard, the Pandhof. We divided this work between the three of us, Stide and I carved about 6 each, and Serge made the rest.

    With my chainsaw I separated the old side crockets from their heavy background parts, so they can be put into storage. But I must say that these old blocks will quickly erode once they're on pallets at ground level. Apparently they can certainly get soaked atop the church, but they'll also dry up again very fast. Here on the ground they'll stay wet for much longer and the old pieces also suffer a lot more from frost.

    Scaffolding visit on Valentine's Day


    We're hoping to carve a lot more for this church, sometime in the future. So we've recently already been back again to see the first blocks in place, and on Valentine's Day we were able to look down on a boisterous Utrecht in bright sunshine. The terraces were full due to the unprecedented warm February sunshine, and with an elated feeling we were looking out over Utrecht and the Utrecht Dom Tower across the street. So, bring on that church!

  • Ornaments for Utrecht's Domkerk and St John's Cathedral 2

    Dom Church, Utrecht, Eusebius, Restoration, Saint John's Cathedral

    Finial

    As you may perhaps remember: I last year I carved ornaments a few times and even made some stonemasonry work for St. John's Cathedral in 's-Hertogenbosch. The blog posts can be found under the following headings: Stonemasonry work and ornaments for St. John's Cathedral, Finally another update! and Ornamental work for the Utrecht Dom Church and St. John's.

    I recently got a new batch of ornamental work in the yard again, including another identical finial block for the same buttress finial of St. John's Cathedral. The first block I carved in its entirety myself, including the stonemasonry parts.

    pallet with ornamental work in the yard of the sculptor's workshop

    The second block was precarved by stonemason Mike Slotboom from Slotboom Steenhouwers in Winterswijk and the ornamental work was done by my colleague Serge. The third block was carved by three young stonemasons from Slotboom Stonemasons, who have all done their terrific best, and I carved the ornaments again: the crockets.

    Together with my colleagues

    sculotor's workshop with many projects

    For larger projects, I work with my colleagues Stide Vos and Serge van Druten. We were all trained as restoration sculptors at our former employer's Beeldhouwerij Mooy in Amersfoort. There, we worked together for about 15 years, so we know each other really well and get along famously.

    Self-employed in the sculptor's workshop

    We've continued all three as independent restoration sculptors, but keep in contact regularly, because it is such an incredibly small world. For this branch, the carving of ornaments and statues in new stone for mainly churches and castles, there are now still three restoration sculptors working fulltime. To my knowledge. It has always been a small group and that's never been a lot larger; there are times when all the work seems to come all at once and times when we really do not have enough work to keep all of us going. That's why we do other work as well, such as autonomous sculptures, reliefs, bronze statues, house signs, repairs, burial monuments, work for other sculptors and much more.

    Recently, Jelle Steendam has come to work in the beeldhouwerij to help alleviate the pressure and increase his knowledge at the same time. So that makes four in the Netherlands. There are of course many other sculptors in stone and I also know a few other restoration sculptors, but I rarely encounter these within my own genre

    Dom Cathedral

    overview West Facade of South Chapel of Dom church Utrecht
    Wherever the numbers are the side crockets are to be replaced

    At this time we're mainly working together on sculptural- and ornamental work for the Utrecht Cathedral and the Eusebius Church in Arnhem. Serge and Stide in particular have made many tuffstone side crockets for the Dom cathedral already, but in between all of the other work I also managed to carve a few flowers in tuff myself. On the right is a picture of the three Gothic pointed arch facades, with a triangular frame above it. Along that frame, 12 crocket flowers are mounted, and with two and a half façade that makes 30 crocket flowers in all. One doesn't count, so we'll need to make 29. This is just a fraction of what you can find on this beautiful church.

    Gallery

    Snow

    It was cold in the sculptor's workshop, but it's beautiful, and we can dress to the occasion. As long as we can warm up again during breaks we'll be fine.

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