• Of Serge van Druten, two athletes and an angel

    background, Restoration, Saint John's Cathedral
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    Serge Van Druten Carving A Marble Rooster
    Sculptor Serge van Druten, 1967-2025. Photo: Hugo Rikken, FullScreen Film

    A difficult request

    In the summer of 2022 I was confronted with a difficult request. My dear colleague Serge van Druten↑ was working on the two limestone statues for the restoration of the Scholten monument in the Stadspark in Groningen. But it didn't go well, he had to be operated on his back and wasn't able to work for a while.

    We agreed that he could work in my studio after the operation, so that we could help him move the statues and help him out- if needed. He'd be starting up very cautiousy and very slowly start working again. And as planned, we got moving. But after a only few days it went wrong: All the ironwork in his back broke off and he had to be operated on again. There was some pressure to this job, it had to be delivered on time, and he asked me if I wanted to finish it. Of course I would have preferred that he could have done it himself, while enjoying working in his own studio. A while earlier I had already carved an angel for him, also because of a surgery. Of course you'd help out a colleague, but knowing that this work was his passion and that he always used to dive into it with a lot of energy, I had a very double feeling about it.

    A long series of operations

    Serge van Druten in 2008

    That back operation later turned out to be one in a long series. He went in and out of the hospital for more than three years, over and over again, and to make it more difficult, he also contracted a degenerative muscle disease. He was never able to sculpt again. I've known Serge since 1993 and from 1995 to 2010 I used to work with him on a daily base, that's why I was very sad when he passed on Wednesday 22 January 2025 , in hospital, 57 years old. He was a special, expressive person, an artist at heart, and has left me with many good memories.

    Car against the monument

    The damaged Scholten monument after the collision. copyright 2020 Feiko van der Veen

    The Scholten monument in the Stadspark in Groningen was erected in 1931 for industrialist Jan Evert Scholten, as a gift from his friends. Scholten had donated this city park to the city, so that's probably why they considered it a good place for the monument. The Sculptor Abraham Hesselink carved most parts for the monument, which consists of a pedestal with a bust of Scholten on it. This is flanked by two walls on which bronze plaquettes are mounted that refer to horse breeding and trot racing, two of Scholten's favourite pastimes. Next to the pedestal are two children in sportswear and on the corners of the monument the coat-of-arms of Stad en Ommelanden have been placed. It has sat there all this time, decaying a little bit over time, Until on Sunday morning 20 September 2020 a car against crashed into the monument with a huge bang and caught fire. The driver was killed instantly.

    Reconstruction

    The two recovered original statues on the truck. Photo: Henk Tammens

    The monument needd to be restored. The two statues were considerably damaged and after some consultation ended up at Serge's place to be reconstructed and resculpted in French limestone. All loose parts were kept on Serges request, so that he could fit them together and supplement the missing pieces with plaster. After reconstructing the statues, he coloured the plaster with acrylic paint, so that it was almost impossible to see that it was all repairs. He ordered the new stone and asked me if I could cut out the two statues on my copying saw machine. Because this machine is a contour saw machine with a saw blade of 40 cm and therefore cannot copy all all of the details, the sides of the statues would not be properly copied, but that was not a real setback. Serge was enough of a professional to easily take care of that.

    Copying

    I contour sawed the two statues out of a new block of limestone. The horizontal saw blade could not copy the space between the arm and the back side, but most details were neatly cut out. Then Serge came and started carving the first statue, taking it easy, starting on the young male figure first. After Serge needed to pull out, the sculptures sat there for a long time. Eventually we came to a decision, We worked out a fee and I carveded the sculpture for him. The carving job was considerably simplified by the sawing machine, But as you can see, there is still plenty of measuring and carving to do before you can call it a full-fledged copy.

    After that, I copied the girl. They're a couple of two stiff athletes, And especially the girl just stands there as if she is doing shopping instead of throwing hammers. The young man with his peculiar eyes looks a little Indonesian, also because of his build. A typical image of that time, shall we say.

    Gallery

    (Read on below!)

    Serge as a sculptor

    Serge climbing one last time into the construction lift, crutches and all, At Saint John's Cathedral, to see his angels up close. 2022. Photo: Roel van der Aa/BD

    I also collaborated a lot with Serge van Druten after the years that we were employed at the Mooy sculpture firm in Amersfoort together, among other things for the St John's Cathedral in Den Bosch, The Netherlands (statues and angels), the St. Eusebius's Church in Arnhem (the Netherlands) (carving ornaments), the Dom Cathedral in Utrecht (tuffstone crockets and large crockets in basalt lava) and of course a lot for the Utrecht Dom Tower in Utrecht (finials, gargoyles, crockets and ornaments).

    Video portrait of a sculptor

    But Serge also had his own projects, Such as its facade reliefs for the commemoration of the landing of St. Boniface in the Netherlands. If you want to know more about this, I'd especially recommend watching the videos that Hugo Rikken from Fullscreen Film made in Serge's studio. A beautifully recognizable portrait of a craftsman and artist, that can be found on the channel of Fullscreen Film on YouTube, by entering the name of Serge van Druten, or by clicking on this link to go through the entire playlist: Videos about Serge van Druten on YouTube.

    An angel being passed on

    Serge was, as I wrote above, suffering from crumbling back vertebrae even before the Groningen athletes. Because of an operation, he asked me 2022 if I wanted to carve the very last of the five angels he would copy into new stone, so the last one would be finished by me. He had reconstructed this angel with plastiline and I carved it in new stone for him. The committee came to inspect it t my place and everything was to their satisfaction.

    This angel was neo -gothic and date from the 1880. It was carved at the time in Udelfanger sandstone, and the intention was to do it the same way again this time around.. Only at the time they had carved it with the layers upright unfortunately. This means that, just like with Pope Leo and Thomas Aquinas, the layers of the stone are running through the sculpture vertically. This causes the danger that whole slices of stone could come down at once. It was quite a challenge for the restoration team to find a block in the quarry from which 1 entire angel could be made. The layer thickness in the quarry (the bank) averages only about 90 cms wide, and these angels are 125 cms tall. But it worked out just fine!

    Gallery: In Principio Erat Verbum-angel, Den Bosch

    (Read on below!)

    Gallery: Of Serge van Druten, sculptor

  • Working on the Dom Tower for five years!

    background, Utrecht Dom Tower, Latest projects, Restoration
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    The upper part of the Dom Tower in Utrecht, The so -called 'lantern', just after the restoration. It is easy to tell that all kinds of old and new blocks in different types of stone have been used.

    Sculpture Workshop 't Oud Erf

    Well it's almost ready, the Dom Tower. And we have been working hard at it. As subcontractors of Slotboom Steenhouwers in Winterswijk we were asked to carry out a large part of the ornament work. The stonemasons took care of the complete measuring package, ordering the stone, consultation, 3D drawings, and cutting and carving the stonemasonry parts , and we were asked to sculpt the ornaments where there were still some square blocks left for us to carve.

    exterior of Sculpture van Velzen in the cold, the apprentices at work in the winter of 2024
    Martijn, Martha, Jelle and Tim working in the cold of winter, in January 2024

    We, that's first and foremost Jelle Steendam and myself, who started on this journey. Later also Nico Hogervorst and Tim Kaarsemaker joined in, and later on, Martha Onderwater and Martijn Linssen also assisted us temporarily.

    Koen van Velzen copying a finial from the Dom Tower in Udelfanger sandstone

    Caarying all the stuff up the narrow stairs

    In 2019, when there was no complete scaffolding around the Dom Tower yet, Jelle and I both climbed the stairs with kilos of tools in order to carve a number of test ornaments in Monte Merlo trachyte, and in Peperino Grigio and in Ledesteen. To our delight, fortunately the decision was made to not have the ornaments carved in Peperino (way too dead looking) or in Ledesteen (“Stonemason's sorrow”, that's what I call it. Rock hard and glassy).

    Why the need to restore it?

    Well, you can have long meetings about that, but it just was necessary. I'll show you above. You don't even want to think about pieces falling from a height of over a hundred meters onto the people walking blow….

    Three times on video

    After a period of silence, our work started with carving huge finials in Portland stone. RTV Utrecht came to visit to record the first inspection round.

    You can watch the video here at timestamp 04:49 in the video.

    Later, nephew Tim was interviewed by a reporter from RTV Utrecht, where I was also asked some questions, also by RTV Utrecht. A short part of it was captured in a video as well.

     

    Later we were approached by the TV show InsideOut (Binnenste Buiten) of the KRO/NCRV, that ended up making an extensive report of our studio. Koen with the finials and crockets, Tim with a big block for the Dom Tower, Jelle with a family crest and Nico with two statues that he was restoring. We were very happy with the end result, that was a good portrayal of our work. A photo report has also been made, that you can find here at this link.

    The Little Cloud Man


    Finally, there was one more journalist from the newspaper Trouw. She came by because she was making a report about the restoration work on the Dom Tower (click on the images on the left to read a small part of it). Based on 1 block she highlighted the role of the architect, the contractor, the stonemasons and the sculptor in this project. My work naturally attracted attention again, because I'd inserted a little 'cloud man'’ in the pinnacle.

    Where an ornament should have been, I used that space to hide tiny figurine. It's just a little thing, but of course it caused a bit of a stir. The idea behind it is that the tower can now defend itself. Anyone who criticizes this restoration of the Dom Tower can expect a snowball from above. I just didn't expect that this corner of this large block would exactly face the Town Hall… Please don't suspect me of ill intent.

    We've made a lot of work for the Dom Tower in those five years, such as tiny finials and enormous crockets, gargoyles, ornaments on all kinds of pinnacle blocks, sometimes of nearly 800 kilos, and occasionally something other than ornaments. Very occasionally we were able to hide a little surprise among all the endlessly identical ornaments. That Little Cloud Man, a scene with wolves, little faces that lift a tip of the veil…

    A Wolf Capital

    Above is one of my very last blocks for the Dom Tower. It is a capital in Monte Merlo trachyte, a quite hard and brittle stone, and the tiny flowers are only a few centimeters tall.

    But if you look closely, you can find a wolf on the right, and to his left a man with binoculars, a fat photographer and a woman with a shotgun, who threatens to shoot it. On the other side of the block we find someone with a protest sign (“Go Away Wolf”). But behind him, a wolf in a top hat is hiding, grinning.

    You can see what you want in it, but I had- when I carved it- never thought it would become so connected to actual news, because the week after it was installed a wolf snatched a small dog from a hiker who had it on a leash, and a toddler got a warning nip from a nursing mother wolf. In the province of Utrecht, less than 15 kilometers from the Dom Tower. You can, if you look carefully with binoculars, find the blocks on the Zadelstraat side, at 20 meters up.

    Architect Erik Jan Brans immortalized by sculptor Jelle Steendam on a capital on the Dom Tower

    Jelle has incorporated the departing architect of the Dom Tower on his capital block, Erik Jan Brans. Architect Brans passed the baton in July 2023 to his successor Karlijn de Wild. With this, Jelle pays a small tribute to a modest, friendly person, on one of the last works in which he was intensively involved. There are also a few blocks with animal figures incorporated at approximately 6 meters up, on the Dom square side.

    Gallery: Capitals and blind tracery Dom Tower

    Apprentice project

    Tim, Nico, Jelle, Martijn and Martha on the scaffolds of the Dom Tower

    The work on the Dom Tower has gradually developed into a apprentice project. I started in 2019 started with colleagues Stide Vos, Serge van Druten and, in my workshop, Jelle Steendam. Later, Nico Hogervorst and Tim Kaarsemaker came to work for me, and later on Martha Onderwater and Martijn Linssen joined us for a shorter period, while Stide and Serge withdrew from work.

    So now I was the only one of the 'old guard of the 90s', and hopes were pinned on the younger generation, as can be seen in the documentaries.

    Martha Onderwater carving her first finial
    Tim Kaarsemaker with his first finial

    Jelle has stopped being an 'apprentice sculptor' for years’ now, he is a fully accomplished sculptor, and I am pleased that the profession is getting a good continuation with this batch. My dream is that there will be enough work for each of them with inspiring commissions. Not just restoration work, but especially new sculptures and reliefs of their own design, in stone and bronze, and probably also in other materials such as cast iron and ceramics. I just keep doing my thing, but I especially enjoy it when these newcomers to the profession push their boundaries and develop new skills in previously unexplored areas. The future belongs to the computer, or so it seems, but I hope with this blog, newspaper articles and video reports to convey that the human hand remains essential to maintain liveliness in carving.

    Photo gallery: Collected works Dom Tower

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