• Patching up and replacing new blocks

    background, Restoration, St Stephen's Church
    Stevenskerk jointing 2
    On a scaffolding often means working in quite tight corners

    'Patching up’ was originally a fishing term for repairing fishing nets, from a time when these still had to be painfully repaired by manual labour with a spool of wire. Nowadays the term is used in all sorts of professions as designation for the re-filling of holes in work previously done.

    I encountered the term before when I worked in parks maintenance, during the filling in of holes in hedges and other plantings, and this time around in the world of stonemasonry.

    To the first post about this project.

    In this case, we are 'patching up' parts of stone sculpture’ in the South Portal of St. Stephen's Church in Nijmegen. We're putting in new pieces of stone in the existing facade, to replace weathered pieces. There is not that much to tell about; it is simply a matter of filling in the holes that we made previously (because we have removed the old blocks there) with new stone again.

    Stide is doing a capital I have hewn to fill around with leveling mortar. After this is the filling in with cast mortar, so the hell block around all stuck
    Stide is busy filling the joints of a capital that I'd previously carved with set mortar all around. After this is the filling in with cast mortar, ensuring that the whole block is tightly joined to the surrounding masonry

    But of course it is no ordinary piece of stone, these are as I said before 20 trefoils (crets, my colleagues say, after the French word crête), 20 crockets (a form of reclining crockets), 7 consoles, two 'caps’ or upper parts of consoles and three capitals.

    It is actually quite a tricky job. If we have made the drawings just right, then the pieces will fit into the holes and then we can add the mortar around the joints. But usually such a block has to come out once again for knocking off a piece of old grout somewhere, and when in very bad luck, a couple of times more, until it fits. Once the block is placed right and the grout has hardened, then through a hole at the top the liquid mortar can be poured behind the block , to fill the area below, next to it, behind it and above it.

    from the outside to the inside: hangen er al drie peaks (trefoils), you see a console, and a crude tire which will soon come lace flowers
    From the outside in: to the far right there are already three crêtes (trefoils), you can see a new console at the top , and from the upper left to the lower-middle a rough band which is where the side crockets will come

    But those are the easy blocks: the capitals and the consoles. The hardest bits are the trefoils. These are very open pieces that will hang from the inside of the pointed arch, from a small contact area. For each trefoil there will be two anchors of stainless steel, which should provide for extra security.

    Finally on the inner one of the pointed arches a whole range of side crockets will be placed. Side crockets are crockets on its side. There are ordinary crockets, water leaf crockets, finials, crockets, suspended flowers, and a few more types of flowers in the Gothic ornamentation, but these are all variations on a theme.

    Next week we'll continue mounting the crêtes (trefoils), and when everything is done, we will accord. A new term to look forward to, but in any case it has nothing to do with accordion music.

    Update 22 april 2015:

    It's coming along nicely with the mounting of the blocks. Today we have suspended the last trefoils inside the arch. These 'crêtes’ have been carved by my colleague Jan Tolboom, so this is a three man's project: We divided the carving work into three parts , Stide and I take care of dismantling and placement and Jan supports us with his advice and insights. A good team, with a hundred years of experience put together.

    The narrow pieces are hung on the inside of the arch with anchors. During curing, we can secure it with glue clamps
    The narrow pieces are hung on the inside of the arch with anchors. During curing, we can secure it with glue clamps
    All trefoils are suspended now, here still supported with glue clamps, until the glue and the mortar has set.
    All trefoils are suspended now, here still supported with glue clamps, until the glue and the mortar has set.

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  • Corbels for St Stephen's Church

    Restoration, St Stephen's Church
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    old weathered consoles and crockets
    the wires are against the pigeons

    After another period filled with carving all kinds of sculpture for third parties, my colleague Stide Vos and I got to carve a whole batch of sculpted ornaments for St. Stephen's Church in Nijmegen in Nijmegen. I took up the corbels.

    console with two dogs in sandstone

    You often find these corbels in the facades of Gothic churches; they are the pedestals on which the statues of Saints were usually placed.  In this case it is from the southern portal, an entrance way. These were traditionally the most richly carved portions of the church, full of ornaments and statues.

    newlyweds with jug, corbel in portlandstone
    two consoles for St. John's Cathedral, 's-Hertogenbosch

    Consoles or corbels are really just protruding blocks on which a statue can be placed. In the typical Gothic style, of course, such a block would extensively be carved with leaf motifs, and here is no different. I have carved some of these before with animal figures, prophets, angels, or with professions such as stone mason, building master and so on.

    But in this case, there were never put any statues on the corbels, and they remained bare . This façade was rebuilt in the 1950s in Ettringer Tuff, and as I so often have seen before Ettringer tuff is just not suitable for fine sculpture . Apparently this church too had been significantly damaged in the war and the choice for this tuff was just one of necessity: in Germany as well, there was great demand for good tuff and the quarries could simply not keep up. Only the lesser tuff was affordable or available for the Netherlands .

    So we found a highly weathered facade when we came to inspect. All lying crockets were changed into dripping candles, of the trefoils that hung on the inside of the pointed arch all the protruding parts were already cut off as a precaution, and a number of capitals had begun to deteriorate as well.

    precarving the leaves on a corbel in tuff
    precarving the leaves on a corbel in tuff

    Stide is now working on new crockets and I took on the corbels. First I carved the profiled parts, the stone masonry bits, so it's now for the ornamental parts. They prove quite nice to carve, because the leaf shapes have a nice line of tension. The new sculpture will also be tuff, but it is Weiberner tuff this time. That is a bit finer and should last longer. But as a precaution the portal will get a roof, in order to slow down the weathering strongly that way.

    corbel in tufa, with hailstones
    it's hailing, it's hailing…

     In the meantime it's still winter, and hail, snow- and rain showers come along. But as long as it is not too windy it is doable. The first three weeks of the winter I always feel a little cold, then the inner heater comes on and it doesn't matter anymore. Only when carving fine details at -10 doesn't work, that really needs be done inside. Anyway, then the air equipment freezes as well and everything becomes harder, smoething you shouldn't really want. Still, this is a beautiful time of year, and I'll take the cold because I love to work outside in the fresh air!

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