A large gargoyle for the Dom Tower

Three Gargoyles in Portlandstone

large crocket for the Dom Tower of Utrecht in new Portland stoneWe have now been carving a lot of large finials, crockets and ornaments for the Utrecht Dom Tower. At the top of the tower, at about a hundred meters height, a ring of gargoyles are installed to spit out the rainwater that falls on the roof and the balustrade. At the end of last year we received three of these old limestone gargoyles: an eagle, a stone-cutting devil and a monster that sits on another devil's shoulders. We divided these three gargoyles among the three of us: colleague Serge got the eagle, Jelle got the stonemason and I would make the last one, all three from new blocks of Portlandstone. We just had to wait a little longer for the third gargoyle, because it hadn't arrived yet. If only I'd known what I'd gotten myself into!

ornaments for the Dom Tower in Utrecht

It doesn't fit!

gargoyle 'stone-cutting devil' is sawn from a block of new stone

Jelle's stone-cutting devil on the contour saw

Serge immediately started cutting out the eagle on the contour saw, then Jelle got to work. But when "my own"’ gargoyle arrived, it turned out that this one was 2 metres 60 tall, and I can only handle 195 cm on my contour sawing machine. So it became clear that I had to measure and copy this gargoyle by hand from the block of stone. The other two were just long enough to fit into the machine.

Copying technique

Koen van Velzen copies gargoyle for the Dom Tower in new stoneIf it all doesn't fit in the machine, it has to be done by hand. In this case I put the two pieces on top of each other, to simplify all measuring work. You can then very quickly see whether the shapes match, because they are put so close to each other. With compasses and contour templates it's easy to find the main shapes.

copying the gargoyle 2,6 m in steenOnce the three most important sides were defined, including the stonemasonry parts of the gutter on top of the gargoyle and the hole through the monster's mouth, I put the two blocks upright. And then it turned out that there was also another demon hiding at the bottom. But with each block on its own turntable I could easily compare and copy again, so that in the end a faithful copy emerged.

Video: inspection at the sculptor's studio

In November 2020 local broadcaster RTV Utrecht visited us for a video report of our work on the ornaments. The restoration committee came to judge our first results.

There is an article on the RTV-Utrecht website with a short report (see here the link↑), but if you wait until everything is loaded, the video will also appear, on which we can bee seen from minute 4:50 in the studio. Because I took this job together with my colleagues Serge van Druten and Jelle Steendam, can they also be seen in this video. By the way, the whole video is worth watching.

Video: Jelle is working on a gargoyle

In the meantime, Jelle was working on his own gargoyle, a stone-cutting demon. I made a short video of it.

 

Gallery: work progress on the two gargoyles

Beeldhouwerijblog.nl is the blog of Koen van Velzen, sculptor in stone and bronze. Look up my website as well: beeldhouwerijvanvelzen.nl

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Unique project in Veghel-1

In the deepest secret

It's been rather quiet on this blog over the past year because I had to keep still about a huge project. It was a gift to the Lambertus Church and the people of Veghel, sponsored by the Van Eerd family, owners of supermarket chain Jumbo. This project had actually since 2017 been in preparation, but only in february 2021 did we actually start carving the first ornaments. However, this was preceded by a long process of studying grainy old photos, enlarging, enhancing, drawing, modeling designs and researching sources.

Two facades

black and white photo old niches Veghel

It concerned two facade claddings for the side gables on the west side of St. Lambert's Church. The entrance side. This church was only the second one that the later famous architect Pierre Cuypers was asked to build, and it was also quite a bit simpler than many of his later buildings. But the building pastor at the time thought that was too meagre. From 1850 (ten years before the start of construction) Catholics were allowed to openly proclaim their faith again and that had to be celebrated in a big way. It had to be richer. More decoration on the outside. And that's how almost 30 statues were added to the tower and how the side facades were covered with natural stone moldings and arches. Until the year 1960, when in the context of a major 'restoration’ the claddings of both side facades were removed. The sculptural parts on the tower were to remain. But the ornaments on the sides had all become a bit jaded, people thought, and in addition, there was still visible damage that had originated during the Liberation of 1944 at the end of the Great War. Good riddance.

Renewed interest

condition of the facade of the Lambertuskerk in Veghel before the restoration of the archesIf we fast forward to the year 2017 we notice that there is renewed interest in the old front view of the church. There were still faded traces on the church that made it clear that at one time something must have been there before, and when some old photos appeared as well, the desire to restore this again arose. It is thanks to the volunteers of the Lambertuskerk that this has been taken up energetically, that a sponsor has finally been found and that it has now come about. On 3 October 2021 the whole project was unveiled by the bishop.

How to tackle such an undertaking?

CAD drawing of the arches for reconstruction and stone carving Already in 2017 I was asked about my thoughts about this reconstruction, but in the end I was involved as a subcontractor of Slotboom Stonemasons in this project. At Slotboom, the existing facades have been accurately measured and compared with the photos, and every part has been worked out in a large three-dimensional computer drawing. The ornaments we were to carve later on fitted snugly inside this main drawing.

I started by blowing up the photos a lot, sharpening them, clarifying details and trying to understand what the project entailed.

Actually, what we see here is a set of arcatures: ten niches with pointed arches and a roof-like structure, which ends in several vertical lines around the neogothic arch window of the church itself. At the start of this window arch we see a horizontal line on the left and right, after which the vertical lines are narrowing again until they end in a niche with a statue of a saint, crowned with a few small finials. The most striking part were the depictions in the bottom ten niches. At first I thought these were ceramic panels, but apparently it was originally done in two-tone stucco. We were asked to also reconstruct these parts. I decided to take it on together with Jelle, and later Nico also joined the team.

Unfamiliar territory

Because there is still yellow Jaumont Limestone to be found at the capitals of the portal, it was quite an obvious choice to carry out most of the natural stonework on these parts in Jaumont as well. It's easy to carve and it also creates nice shadows. Cutting ornaments is not new to me, so I wasn't too worried about this part. After all, gradually many things become clear by themselves if you go at it one thing at a time. Making a proper quotation is sometimes more difficult than the implementation!

However, the design was much more stylized than I normally find in Gothic and Neo-Gothic churches, so that was a bit of a switch. At the top were two statues of St. Peter and Paul, and though the pictures were quite blurry, one will find a way through it if you just tackle it step by step: first a small model at scale 1:4, then at full size and then reproduce that into stone.

Panels

But the most difficult were the panels with ten scenes from the life of Jesus. I honestly don't know much about ceramics and thought I had to outsource this part, until someone suggested I carve it in basalt lava and then have it enameled. So we did, just as we were told. About that later meer↑.

The limestone ornaments

After working in Photoshop and a number of other programs (including the fantastic free program Faststone Image Viewer, in which you can also do some editing at lightning speed) to get the old images enlarged and sharpened, I was able to get a good impression of most of the ornaments and the two statues of the saints. With prints of these photos I could model the maquettes for the ornamental work and cast them in plaster. Jelle took care of the capitals, while Nico already started carving the first pieces inside the top of the niches: leaf motifs in basalt lava that would later be enamelled.

Meanwhile, all the photo editing added up unnoticed, until I had been staring at it for days, but it gave me a nice handle for the reconstructions. With one exception that we couldn't really get a grip on. At the bottom of the frames at the start of the large gothic arch window are a total of four very unclear ornaments. You can discover one in the photo above. This is the clearest of the four, but the meaning of it completely eluded us. Taking the plunge, I then proposed to replace these four corbels with the four evangelist signs according to tradition.

small corbels with the four evangelists fot the Lambertus Church in Veghel

The Four Evangelists

roof parts with ornamentsHalfway through the facade you will now find four small corbels with an angel on them, a lion, a bull and an eagle, all four with a book. They are the age-old symbols of the evangelists, in response to a text in the Bible book of Revelation:

Revelation 4:6-8: In the midst of the throne and around the throne were four creatures . The creatures were full of eyes in front and behind. The first creature looked like a lion. The second creature looked like a young bull. The third creature had the face of a human. The fourth creature looked like a flying eagle. Every creature had six wings and every creature was full of eyes inside and out.

Although I don't think this is about evangelists at all, also because this bible book is full of astronomical and astrological references, in later centuries people invariably represented the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John according to these four symbols. In any case, as a sculptor you can make something fun out of it.

Playing with composition

sketch for corbel with bullThese are the parts we like to make the most. How do you design something like this? Just the four heads or the whole beasts? With or without wings? Should we add a book or a scroll or neither? Do we just carve a very cubist, Art Deco-esque head or emblem? These were very small and shallow blocks in which we had to fit the ornament, with a continuing column on one side.
So after a few quick little sketches and a bit of rough sculpting, we carved these corbels in a sort of mix between direct carving and working from a model.. Jelle made the angel and the lion, I did the bull and the eagle. I made a clay model of the bull after a tiny drawing, the eagle was done a bit more in the direct carving method.

corbel stone St. Luke's Bull VeghelWe always have a lot of fun putting little details into it and making it a little bit odd, just like this sort of thing is always meant to be. Of course they are often not quite anatomically correct and the stone was actually a bit coarse for these kind of small details, but it's a lot of fun to cram it all in and find an interesting composition for it. Jelle made his angel and lion so that they looked down, and I thought that was a good idea, that I followed for my eagle. The bull is the only one looking over his bible book and holding it with his paws. On the left facade you see Matthew and Mark: a downward flying angel and lion, each with a book. On the right facade we have Luke and John: a seated bull with book and a descending eagle with book. The book indicates that these are the four evangelists.

Carving voluptuous ornaments

band with ornaments in yellow limestone for the church of VeghelThere is a horizontal band with ornaments on the two facades, for which I first made a plaster model to explore the shapes. Gradually I got some fun carving the curvy shapes of these bands, that somehow reminded me of a well-filled lady. Jaumont is also a type of stone that lends itself to this work, because it is easy to finish with a sharp wood rasp and it also draws nice shadows with that yellow.

All ornamental work in Jaumont limestone

the left facade with arches, here without enamelled panels (photo: Bas Mulder, Slotboom Stonemasons)

Thus we carved all the ornaments on the two facades. Above the pointed arch window you will find four large crockets on each facade, Nico made two more French lilies, there are two small capitals next to each statue and at the very top you will find two small pinnacles and a small finial. All other yellow natural stone parts were supplied by Slotboom Steenhouwers, who also took care of the installation.

Gallery

-click on 1 of the pictures for the larger version-

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Beeldhouwerijblog.nl is the blog of Koen van Velzen, sculptor in stone and bronze. Look up my website as well: beeldhouwerijvanvelzen.nl

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the right facade with arcatures, here without enamelled panels (photo: Bas Mulder, Slotboom Stonemasons)

The stepped gable of the Latin School in Nijmegen

ornaments in Baumberger stone for the Latin School in Nijmegen

A Hasty Rush and still doing a proper job

Suddenly we got an urgent phone call: can you find time to participate in carving work for the Latin School in Nijmegen? Actually that shouldn't have surprised me: lately everyone has been busy and there are always two delivery dates a year that have a really hard deadline: before the Christmas holidays and before the summer holidays. The first one is because they prefer not to leave the scaffolding up during New Year's eve, think of fireworks and strange actions, and the second one is because there is a long period when there is no one on the scaffolding. Besides, these are great moments to finish a year or a six months period.

Three sides per block

ornaments in Baumberger stone for the Latin School in NijmegenThis was another such case of 'it has to be ready before Christmas'. Only those who took on the job were already terribly busy with all kinds of other projects and they actually couldn't find anyone other than Jelle and I to help out. And so ten blocks of ornamental work from the Latin School came our way. Fortunately, our colleague Serge also managed to find the time for carving a few of these blocks, otherwise we would not have made it all. Each block has three carved sides so just check, 30 processed sides that is a good number of weeks of work.

Dutch Renaissance

ornaments in Baumberger stone for the Latin School in NijmegenIt is interesting to carve these things, because much of it has disappeared through weathering and then you just need to reconstruct what was there. Fortunately, one can usually trace a part over from other blocks, and as this is made in the style of the Dutch Renaissance, some examples of it were still in my head. Flowers, leaves, stems and ribbons and a few fruits. Botanically it's really a mess, for a plant with oak leaves bears chrysanthemum flowers and pomegranates, but it is a lot of fun to make. If only there wasn't that much pressure on it!

block numbering Latin SchoolBut we got it done in time. As it always goes with these things you get the hang of it over time and then the second one goes a lot faster than the first, the third even more quickly, and that's how you get the knack for it. Jelle and Serge, in addition to their other duties, could complete two blocks each and I did the other six.


Latin School

ornaments in Baumberger stone for the Latin School in NijmegenThese blocks are intended for the stepped gable of the Latin School in Nijmegen. They flank the stepped facade, and are covered by horizontal parts, some of which also contain ornamental work. This Latin School is not unknown to me. In 2015 Stide and I spent several months working on the South Portal of St. Steven's Church, which is opposite it. Then we also made a quote for copying the statues of the Latin School, but another company with a robotic milling machine had submitted a lower price. Because they didn't have enough sculptors to do the end carving, Serge and Stide have been finish carving those statues in Obernkirchener sandstone. In the video below you can see Stide cutting away a block of sandstone from under Apostle Thaddeus with my chainsaw . He still had to get to know the saw a bit, but it was a handy way to get rid of a large block.

Baumberger stone

ornaments in Baumberger stone for the Latin School in NijmegenThese sculptures were carved in Baumberger stone in the 1960s by sculptor Giuseppe Roverso from Nijmegen. He probably also provided this ornamental work. The copies of the sculptures from 2016 were made in the much stronger Obernkirchener sandstone, because Baumberger only lasts for about 70 years. Why a different type of stone was not chosen for these blocks as well is a mystery to me. Yes, it does fit with the historical use of materials, but unfortunately it doesn't last very long outside if you don't paint it. We'll see how they will keep up. Despite all the haste, it was a very nice assignment to make.

Beeldhouwerijblog.nl is the blog of Koen van Velzen, sculptor in stone and bronze. Look up my website as well: beeldhouwerijvanvelzen.nl

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