• Finials for St. Eusebius's Church

    Eusebius, Restoration
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    We're currently carving parts of pinnacles by the cartload. They are all destined for St. Eusebius's Church in Arnhem (the Netherlands). Below are some pictures of work I've made this far. In the picture above you can see a number of blocks ready for transport: successively, an old tuffstone block, a block of red sandstone from my hand, one by Stide and one by Jelle, and finally one by Jelle in Massangis-limestone. It's ornamental work for two complete big finials, and many individual parts for some other pinnacles.

    old pinnacle of tuff stone fromSt. Eusebius's Church in Arnhem
    the old pinnacle of tuffstone

    Ornaments

    Actually we don't carve all of the stonemasonry parts ourselves. That was done by the stonemasons from Slotboom Stonemasons in Winterswijk, the Netherlands. We only do the ornamental parts. Many of the old ornaments have crumbled and were carved a bit shallow and plump at the time. A great opportunity to make something nice out of it again. I also found a couple of weird forms of crockets (Gothic leaf motifs) on a number of blocks. Since this work was to be inserted into existing work as a repair, I just copied this strange design as it was, so that it does not contrast later on with the other elements of that pinnacle.

    Colourful ensemble

    The two finials that are to be replaced completely are composed of five different types of stone: white Massangis-limestone, brown Udelfanger sandstone, Red Eifel Sandstone, red Bentheimer sandstone and yellow-brown Weiberner tuff stone. This was similarly used in the 1920s in a previous restoration and for their durablity also used for these pinnacles. It will provide a vivid image of contrasting stone types.

    old finial block tufa

    Massangis

    This is the first time I'm working in Massangis limestone. It's quite a tricky stone: for a limestone, its quite touch and rather difficult to keep the edges crisp. In the restoration of the Utrecht Dom Tower we will probably be going to carve a lot of ornaments in Massangis, so it looks like we're already practicing for that!

  • 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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