• 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!

  • The flying buttress of the seven sins

    background, Eusebius, Restoration

    We, sculptors

    A nice project is coming up soon! As you may know, for a few years now we've been working for St. Eusebius's Church in Arnhem (the Netherlands). Who are we? Well firstly myself of course, Koen van Velzen, restoration sculptor, pleased to meet you. I work with my colleagues Stide Vos, who rents the studio next to mine. And in the past year on this project, our newest addition Jelle Steendam has joined us. He works in my shop space, as an independent sculptor, in consultation with me, on various sculptures.

    flying buttress statues 'The Seven Sins' old, arramged in the yard.
    flying buttress no. 32 of the Eusebius Church is finished and installed
    meanwhile, the first flying buttress figurines of the second series are being installed

    Seven Sins

    We have now completed eight flying buttresses, but there are still 7 more with sculptures on this church. That why I recently welcomed the next series of 7 figurines to my yard, for flying buttress no. 24.

    The theme of this arc is 'The Seven Sins’. An interesting theme, that immediately evokes various images to me as a sculptor.

    For how do you imagine Pride, Rage, or Envy? This kind of thing is very interesting if like me you're a storyteller. Most people may not know me that way, but I love stories.

    Fortunately, this series also showed an interesting challenge for the original sculptor. Because what we're about to do with it is copying them. No new designs this time. It's true, three of the statues are missing an arm, but otherwise they're very clear in what they portray.

    Broken

    The Seven Sins: Lust, a broken old statue of impregnated tuff

    They came in, packed in wooden crates and wrapped in netting. The reason for this is a difficult issue, and it's not clear to me what exactly went wrong with these figurines, even after quite a number of discussions. In short: The sculptures of the Seven Sins were carved in tuff around 1955. In the 1990s they started to deteriorate, and to preserve them, they were sent for impregnation with acrylic resin, up to the core. Read more about this process here.

    It's a good process, albeit fairly expensive, but with these sculptures, something has gone completely wrong. In one way or another they started to expand, and they still do. Lots of deep cracks appeared, and suddenly pieces began falling off. To avoid worse all figurines were quickly removed and stored in boxes. And even inside those boxes they continued to expand and break.

    Gluing it all up again

    flying buttress statues 'The Seven Sins' are glued by Jelle Steendam in the yard of Beeldhouwerij van Velzen

    So the first thing Jelle started on, with my help, was unpacking and bonding of these figurines. The pieces are razor sharp but fit reasonably well. After all the unpacking and gluing we had seven well recognizable sculptures in a row.

    Next step is to reconstruct the missing parts on the basis of old photographs (so if you have any old photos of the Seven Sins, in particular, of Gluttony, Avarice or Vanity, I hope you'll mail them to me!).

    I have been looking forward a lot to make something beautiful out of them again!

    flying buttress statues 'The Seven Sins' old, arramged in the yard.
    lust-envy-sloth-gluttony-rage-avarice-vanity

    To the next article about these flying buttress statues.

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