• The flying buttress with the seven sins-2: carving!

    background, Eusebius, Restoration
    Copy air arch image the anger. Photo during the carving of the details

    As you may perhaps remember: at 9 March 2019 I posted a blogpost about our next series of flying buttress figurines to be carved for St. Eusebius' church, which arrived in pieces in our yard.

    These images were impregnated with acrylic resin, to the core, but something went wrong and they burst at the seams. Literally. On an old photo you can see how the sculptures sat there under tension, arcing above the flying buttress itself, because they expanded so much.

    flying buttress no. 24, expanded and broken

     Jelle then spent a long time gathering all the loose parts and bonding them into recognizable sculptures again. These were the seven sculptures from flying buttress no. 24, on the subject of The Seven Sins. The first sculptures are finished now.

    I haven't even done that much work on this arc myself, mainly because I was busy with other projects: Thomas Aquinas, large crockets for The Utrecht Dom Cathedral, and family crests (I've been busy with the next one already, in Belgian bluestone).

    Naughty ladies for Jelle

    Jelle Steendam busy carving a copy of the flying buttress statuette of Gluttony
    Jelle Steendam with Gluttony

    Stide has also been busy with other projects, so Jelle was the one who had the most momentum. He had presawn a number of sculptures and subsequently been carving away on Vanity and Gluttony. He is now working on Greed. I've only made Rage so far, and Stide is now working on Lust.

    Flying Buttress Figurine Vanity, copy by Jelle Steendam
    Vanity is very pleased with her own beauty

    Vanity is a lady with long hair and a mirror, Gluttony is a fat lady stuffing something in her mouth, and Lust is a naked lady with toads to her chest. I'll keep it short about these sculptures here, the gentlemen can explain that on their own websites.

    The Anger

    One of the seven deadly sins is the rage, or anger. This was the statue that I got to carve myself. It represents a man pulling a knife and with a face distorted from rage and hair pulled back, frightening everyone else.

    copying flying buttress statue Rage
    Carving a copy of flying buttresses figurine Rage

    The original image had sharp teeth, but the eyes were closed, so that the expression was a bit half-hearted. So I took some pictures to find out how the eyes are in such a face.

    expression study of flying buttress figurine The Rage

    Latin terminology

    carving flying buttress statue Rage (close-up)

    Each of these seven vices has a latin term to it, and Ithought it would be nice to carve that word in the side of the profile for each of the sculptures. This would be Ira, the Latin word for rage, Gluttony becomes Gula, Vanity would be Superbia and Lust becomes Luxuria . Then there are Avaritia (greed/avarice), Acedia (laziness/sloth) and Invidia (envy/slander). And each virtue has its own term as well, but those will be coming up much later on, because after this, we first get to carve the Musicians and the Apostles from flying buttress no. 14 and 16.

    Crates full of debris: old photos wanted!

    crates with flying buttress figurines that are yet to be copied.
    some of the crates with the old flying buttress figurines
    a crate with a flying buttress figurine in ruins
    if you have any old photos, that would help me a lot in their reconstruction

    We had a few weeks of good weather, so I took the opportunity to measure up all of the remaining flying buttress sculptures, so we'd -in due course- be able to order the new stone in advance. But I didn't find all the figurines in good condition in their crates! There were a few crates among them with only a thick layer of debris at the bottom. I have no doubt that if necessary we could also reconstruct these sculptures properly, but seven of these figurines will not return to the church. People are thinking hard about a modern interpretation to fill the holes they leave behind.

    weathered tuff sculptures in storage in the sculptor's yard
    a small part of the old sculptures in the yard

    But for the rest of them, we'll have to restore everything and let our creativity fill in the missing parts. If anyone has any old pictures of the flying buttresses on which the sculptures still shine in full regalia, I can use those very well. My email address can be found on the contact page.

    Almost 60 finished, some 38 more to go?

    weathered figurines of the musicians in storage
    a few of the seven musicians and seven apostles from buttresses 14 and 16

    We're coming along nicely, carving all those new figurines: with these three we've landed at 56 , and number 57 and 58 are already in progress. It is hard to imagine that we've made so many already and it still is fun to do! I must admit that the Foolish Maidens and especially the Crippled were not as interesting, but these are definitely worth it because they are so expressive and clearly tell a story. And then you have to remember that we also did a lot of work for the tower of St. Eusebius's Church. Especially Stide spent months of carving in the workshop in Arnhem and made a lot of corbels into new stone.

    list of all flying buttresses and their themes
    -click on the image for a larger view-

    There are still a lot of figurines to go, but not all of the sculptures can be saved. We do not know how many we'll still get to carve exactly, but for the curious among us, here's a list of all the flying buttress numbers and the themes for each arch (sorry, it's in Dutch only!).

    To the next flying buttress image and on YouTube

  • 70 percent debris

    background, sculpture

    One is often not aware, but when carving a statue from a block of stone, only a small part of it remains. I once calculated that very easily 70 percent of the block is thrown in the skip, and sometimes even more than that.

    In this case, the block of Anröchter Grünstein (they often call it dolomite) for the ferns weighed 3,5 tons, because I had taken a rough block. If I had taken a block that was cut to size, it would have been about 2200 kilos.

    I think I will end up with 600 kilos, so that's just a bit over 17 percent that remains. Normally one would take a block cut to size, So that means they already throw a lot of stones and debris at the quarry (The rough sides, non-right-angle pieces, bad pieces, and what was redundant after splitting the block).

    Most people find it a pity that you throw away so much of a resource. In a way that's true, but on the other hand that's just what makes it sculpting: Creating a form by taking away the excess. And that excess comes in the form of rubble, that's just the way it is. Using a computer-controlled wire saw you might still be able to retain greater residual pieces, but these still oddly formed and after a period of storage often still end up in the skip.

    Actually, this is quite a trivial topic; weight is obviously not the form of an image and nothing at all about beauty. At most, it says something about the process. That's what I like about sculpting: it is a process with many hours of handicraft between the creative parts. I do not constantly need to use creative side, I often enough may simply carve, and that gives a nice balance. How much noise all that cutting and that compressor will make, I notice that the purely physical aspect of the work to me forms a big part of the fun in the sculpting process.

    At the time when I had the stonemason's training, I noticed that all this hitting the chisel and stone brings a certain calm. With each blow you delete something from your unrest. Someone who has ever seen a stonemason doing his decorative chiselling will understand what I mean. I sometimes think that sculpting in stone could be a good form of therapy for burnt-up managers. Maybe something for the future.

    Nasty the first message about this project.
    Nasty the next post about this project.

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