• Flying buttress figurine: An accordionist

    Eusebius, Restoration
    Accordionist new, Muschelkalk limestone
    melodeon, black and white drawing

    Securely bolted down

    Actually, it wasn't an accordionist. More like a man with a melodeon, that small thing that they use in sailor's choirs. But at last it had arrived! I 'd been waiting for it for a long time, because it was stuck. To the new Focus Filmtheater. When I first asked for it, the replies were not good: the figurine (that I still was to copy) was temporarily borrowed out to the theater, but apparently it was attached so very rigidly that it was impossible to ever get it loose again. The roof would have to come off, or I would have to recieve the sculpture with the Film theater attached, you get the point.

    After much consultation, calling and meeting the sculpture turned out to be a bit easier to disassemble and it came my way.

    Presawing

    old flying buttress sculpture on pre-sawing machine

    When I got it in, the long pieces of threaded rod were still attached. That was actually a bit of a bother, because I had to make an entire construction for it to properly anchor the statue on my presawing machine. But a challenge from time to time is fun, so with some inventiveness we were able to come up with a good solution. It wasn't all that complicated from that point on: presawing the sculpture, copying it and sharpening up the details.

    Rough

    new flying buttress figurine accordionist

    The two flying buttresses that we are currently tackling have been carved (round 1956) quite roughly by Eduard van Kuilenburg. Add to this the fact that this accordionist spent more than sixty years on top of the church and you'll understand that it has all become a bit vague. The challenge in this sculpture is therefore not so much in the technical difficulty. The statue of Pope Leo the Great was a much more difficult job. When carving this group of sculptures, the main issue is with the details and finish.

    These statues don't have many details, and the parts that were there were carved very simple. The finish is coarse. Therefore, the most interesting part is carving things like the face, the hands and feet in such a way that these show a bit more, but still clearly match the style of the rest of the sculpture. And as for the finish: by playing with different surfaces such as bush hammered, pointed, toothed or flat chisel marks, lively surfaces can be created that enhance the design.

    Giving it hands and feet

    new flying buttress figurine accordionist

    The accordionist's hands were not equal on the left and right. The right hand did have somewhat like fingers, but on the left he only had a lump with a few stripes. However, the sculptor had chosen a nice position of the fingers, which indicates the playing on the keys. The feet were never really detailed, and after that it all weathered down further. The position of the hands and feet has remained the same in the new copy, but I've made more obvious fingers and toes on it. They're still huge lumps, though. The accordionist's face was slightly turned to the right, and he had a nice crooked smile, as if he was completely absorbed in a difficult piece of music. It was almost impossible to see anymore, so I recreated it a little more clearly in the new copy. The eyes of these figurines all have only upper eyelids and a hole underneath. However, it works very well in terms of shading, so I left it that way.

    Crooked

    It is striking that almost all heads that Van Kuilenburg carved are so strongly asymmetrical. Foreheads that run in an odd angle, a cheekbone two centimeters deeper than the other, eyes that are in a completely different plane. More and more often I wonder if he might have had trouble seeing depth, or that he only had sight in 1 eye. This sculptor's life was very tragic and he only got 39 years old. Maybe someday more about his life will be published, but it is not up to me to do that here. In any case, we try to make those crooked heads a bit more plausible without detracting too much from the character of the original sculpture. If you'd copy it exactly like this you'd get a sculpture that is even worse than the original, because you can't transfer some of its directness into the copy. Therefore, in order to maintain this fluency, we don't copy it with a pointing machine, but we work partly in the same way as Van Kuilenburg: shaping directly into the stone.

    ornaments south portal Eusebius Church, in Baumberger stone

    South Portal

    ornaments south portal Eusebius Church, in Baumberger stone

    A partial assignment that came in between all of this was the ornamental work for the South Portal of St. Eusebius's Church. We suspect that this too was originally carved in the 1950s. But it is known that Baumberger stone doesn't last that long and washes out quite quickly into a shapeless mass. Because a number of parts were already missing and chipped, a lot of natural stone has been replaced. We did some of those ornaments, our colleague Serge did the largest part at our request.

    3D-scan

    Finally, someone came by this week with a scanner and laptop: Emiel Frederiks from Nidim. He recorded the copy of the accordionist into a 3D model, from which one day maybe small versions will be printed. We'll see.

    To the next flying buttress statue.

  • Flying buttress figurine: Apostle Andrew last week

    Eusebius, Restoration
    2 comments
    flying buttress figurine of Apostle Andreas, newly copied in Muschelkalk limestone

    Setback

    We're coming along nicely with carving the musicians from flying buttress no. 14, but we were faced with some adversity. The block for the trumpeter showed some significant cracks and had to be re-ordered. That's all part of the warranty by the quarry, but still annoying, because they will not reimburse transportation. Fortunately, I 'm not bothered too much by that myself, as it's all in the hands of Slotboom Stonemasons as they're the ones orderering the stone. We also missed the picture of from Accordeonist ↑, which had mistakenly been glued to the new movie theater. But meanwhile it has now been pried loose and has finally arrived in our yard. I immediately started with pre-cutting with the saw machine and the first carving right away. We were also soon to receive

    a delegation of customers who had bought an old statue of the apostles, but Coronavirus has thrown a spanner in the works.

    Attributes for each apostle

    Meanwhile, we've just begun carving work on flying buttress no. 16, a series of 6 times an apostle and the Mystic Lamb up on top. Stide has already completed the apostle St Peter, Jelle has just finished carving the Mystic Lamb, and I completed Apostle Andrew last week for this buttress.. He was easy to recognize by the cross he holds. It's a jolly group altogether, those apostles: all of them hold the torturing device by which they were put to death. Those were the days.

    Andrew did not want to be crucified in the same way as Jesus, but that never bothered them: they made the St. Andrew's Cross especially for him. We now use it as a warning sign for a level railway crossing.

    Coarsely carved

    side view Saint Andrew

    As I previously reported, these flying buttress figurines tend to get more voluminous and rougher as sculptor Eduard van Kuilenburg was nearing the end of the work. From arch to arch you can clearly see the development the sculptor went through.

    In the fascinating book on the sculpture at this church is an anecdote that relates how the church council responded in shock to the "crowded flying buttresses’ carrying these massive apostles. The six disciples sit there looking impressive, with big hands and broad heads. They're fairly easy to carve, but very expressive in its performance. On different sides you can see how the sculptor worked: he drew on a number of sides the contours of arms, body and legs and just started carving away. That's why his left arm still remains quite flat and follows the mass of the original block.

    Two right feet

    Apparently his feet were less important, because Van Kuilenburg spent considerably less attention to those details. Like the Listening Man that Stide copied and with The Little Praying Man from the northwest side, one of his feet is the other way around, with the big toe on the wrong side. Again, I just corrected that a bit, that doesn't further affect the overall look of the sculpture.

    No changes made

    But apart from that one foot, I haven't changed anything in this figurine. It was carved a little bit cartoon-like, and anatomical correctness was clearly subordinate to its narrative power. If you would try to adjust everything by all means to 'how it should be', then you would clearly miss the point and end up with something that's neither this not that. Therefore I have tried to approach the coarse structure of the old figurine by using the bush hammer-chisel, because this also contributes to the overall character of this statue. I thought it was a very expressive little thing, that reminded me strongly of the twelve heads that Stide copied on the west facade of the tower of St. Eusebius's Church.

    All in all a very nice sculpture to carve. This series will definitely be clearly silhouetted on the arches around the chancel of the church later on!

    To the next flying buttress statue.

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