Just like a few years ago, I'm working on some parts for St John's Cathedral in Den Bosch, The Netherlands. At the time I carved, among other pieces, a canopy in my shop this year. This time I made a base block for a finial when he.
This is the lower part of a Gothic pinnacle. I got a new block of sandstone, and I first made the stonemasonry parts by following the printed templates: neatly carved out all profiled bits and wherever ornaments (crockets) will end up, I left a rectangular block.
A whole different way of working
Stonemasonry work is not something I do regularly; I think it was about 15 years ago I that made such a complex piece as this. During sculptural work you can afford yourself a few mistakes: no one will see it if a hand ends up a few centimeters lower. But in stonemasonry work, a few millimeters too deep sometimes is a big mistake. The point is that everything should be carved crisp and precise. So the challenge is to proceed very methodically, and therefore you'll always need to preserve a plane from which you can measure the next one.
With the new block in front of me, plus a whole lot of templates, I first took the time to figure it all out: what should I first remove and what should absolutely remain for later?
Working all sides
In sculptural work, I usually keep working the whole sculpture on all sides, so I'll know roughly where everything's going. First I'll carve the whole statue in the rough, and then I'd refine. If I would do that in this finial base, it would not end well. Discipline is key here. Luckily I had some advice from my neighbor/colleague Stide, who has worked as a stonemason for years, and together we worked it out.
A stonemason who's used to doing this daily would maybe laugh about this, but every profession has its own skills. However, it turned out allright. Nice project for once because of its challenge, but I was glad that I could continue carving the ornaments: the crockets on this block.
Sloping face
Another piece that I got in my yard was a block wih one sloping side: an inclined plane, in Udelfanger sandstone as well, on which three ornaments were to be carved. Below pictures of the starting block and the result.
New block of sandstone, supplied preprocessed by the stonemason's.
The old block, also in Udelfanger sandstone. The ornaments are heavily weathered.
After my last post on this blog, it has remained silent for far too long here. But not because I haven't done anything! On the contrary, it's been way too busy to report it all.
So I've been working on the carving of another coat-of-arms in Bentheimer sandstone. The design was almost the same as the previous one, but this one would would be suspended from a wall. Therefore, it was carried out lighter, without an edge to the relief and with a thinner base of 3 cms thick.
After that, I went on with the next set of flying buttress figurines for St. Eusebius's Church. Last year I've carved 24 of these for 4 flying buttresses on the north side of the church, around the theme of Noah's Ark. This year the four flying buttresses on the south are up. No, three, because a flying buttres with 7 trumpet angels have in november 2016 already been copied by me. We started this time with a series which was originally designed and carved by George van der Wagt, round 1954.
The theme of this group is the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. Van der Wagt has portrayed this by carving a group of lame, crippled, blind and stricken people into the tufa. But I honestly do not see the connection of this with the blessings of Jesus in the Bible. Van der Wagt felt that it should be strongly angled so as to get a clear silhouette from below. But after fifty years it has become very difficult to even see what it's supposed to be, even from up close. Of one of the sculptures, of a Woman with a Clubfoot, only one quarter was left. This one I needed to reconstruct before I could copy it.
I was quite busy with carving the coat-of arms, the griffins and the flying buttress figurines, and much more would arrive later. It looked as if it would be to much to handle all by myself. My colleague Stide was doing sculpture parts for the tower of St. Eusebius's church, and my other colleague Serge was working on his own commissions, so I was looking for a solution. And that came in the person of Jelle. Jelle was trained as an artist and knows his way well around stone. Because there is always more to be learned in this trade, it's a beautiful combination: Jelle will help carving the sculptures and meanwhile will learn some tricks of the trade. For me it's also nice that this handicraft will not die out for the Netherlands after my generation of three colleagues has left. Below Jelle in action with the copying saw. This figurine will then be carved by himself.
We also did some sawing work on some flying buttress figurines and on 12 heads for the west facade of the tower , which are currently being carved by Stide.
Myself, carving a flying buttress image that was just presawn
Four flying buttresses on the north side
Jelle and I together made these figurines taking each a turn. Work on the griffins is on hold now for a while, because the church has a completion date set: In March the four arches should be complete and the tower finished. In 2020 the other forty flying buttress figurines on the other side of the church will follow. Just, to taste the atmosphere and see what has already been created for this church, at visit to the scaffolds of St. Eusebius's church.
Stonemasonry work
Carving from a block
If I felt that I was busy, then apparently someone else can still surpass that : I was called by the restoration stonemasons if I could take on part of their work, because they were even more busy. Construction is going well in the Netherlands. Everywhere there's a lack of professionals and contractors don't know how to finish all that work. When it rains there, it will be dripping on me, too. A few years ago I sometimes had some months without work, but that time is long past. So now I'm doing a -for me- quite unusual job, the stone carving of a block that is: the lower part of a finial, including the profiles, trefoils, pointed arches and crockets. After that, the carving of the ornaments follows.
accurate measurements
I have of course been doing this once before. But that was almost 15 years ago, so I had to really think about how I should handle this. For there is indeed a real difference between stonemasonry parts and sculptural work. Stonemasonry is everything you can mark on the block of stone from a template. It is tight, geometric work, for which you need to work very systematically to keep everything exactly perpendicular and crisp. Sculptural parts are more organic. This involves shapes, style, tension in the lines, elegance, and the like. These two complement each other; in Gothic architecture, the one can not exist without the other . In this block the ornaments would fall under sculptural work, and everything else is stonemasonry work. More about this soon pinnacle part.
Dom Church, Utrecht
Finally, I, Stide and Serge climbed the Cathedral of Utrecht in connection with a quotation. Gorgeous, impressive place, as seen from above!
