#stonemasonry

14th (?) century doorway, Lincoln cathedral.

thank you i do love it!! and great question, you actually can add stuff, if a piece of stone is broken off, we can put in a new piece, which is called a Dutchman. we cut the opening to be rectangular and fit a new piece of stone into it (ideally from the same exact quarry the original stone is from), and attach it with screws on the rear and mortar around the sides. for architectural elements we also sometimes cast replicas out of concrete!

CRAFTS — 214/262 — Stonemason

Stone masons were engaged in the quarrying and dressing of stone. Their activities included quarrying stone blocks from the rock-face, splitting them into smaller pieces, grinding, cutting, polishing and dressing them to make building blocks or vault elements. The first mention of an organized stonemasons’ guild in Bohemia dates from the 14th century. The patron saints of quarriers and stonemasons are St Roch and St Joseph, and in places also St Barbara and St Procopius. Stone-working found application mainly in the construction industry. The mason’s mark was a graphic symbol, though not the maker’s signature, on the surface of a finished stone piece. The number of finished and marked pieces determined the payment due. Each mason either attained his mark, or had it allocated to him at a particular point in his apprenticeship, and then kept it for life.

TRIVIA

— Masons’ marks were part of a varied and adaptable system rather than a single fixed practice. Their use can be traced back thousands of years, and even in the Middle Ages they differed between regions, workshops, and individual building sites.

These marks served a practical purpose during construction, such as indicating the correct placement or sequence of stones, sometimes using numbering systems on adjoining blocks. Marks could also indicate the origin or quality of the stone, or identify a particular workshop or team of masons. The system was not formally recorded, and there is no evidence of a universal system. Marks could be assigned for a single building project, reused, or adapted from those of a master, and similar designs appear across widely separated regions without necessarily indicating the same craftsman. In some cases, groups of marks suggest work by teams of stonemasons.

At the church of St. Barbara in Kutná Hora the masons who completed the vault in 1548 displayed their marks on the ceiling (of the vaults) and painted them within shields alongside their initials and the date.

John Burnside

the snake is a snake;

but the toad has a human face, in the hidden gallery under the roof, where the masons

practised their art, away from the bishops and kings.

We’ve seen this much before (in Salisbury, say, or that chapel above the Esk

at Rosslyn): a refuge for the pagan in the chill

of Christendom, a Green Man in the fabric of the stone; a running

boar; the sacred hare; or else

the common wren, so lifelike it might flit at any time

into a corner, tail erect, the eye

agleam, as if to indicate its known propensity

for lust (which, in the old tongue, meant no more

than pleasure: no-one’s shame and not a sin,

but life as such, immediate and true

like flight, or song).

At Reims, they say,

the toad is done from life - sans doute

un proche - a relative or friend,

and high in the highest beams, where no one goes,

a workman has sculpted a cat with a woman’s smile.

It’s cold in here: a memory

of life, not life itself,

but just as the light that falls through the stained-glass

windows falls to scattered points of colour in the dark,

not from a god, but from a common memory of being

lost amongst the trees, old demons

watching from the murk, some errant body

flitting back and forth from light to dark

till something more familiar than a god

escorts the wanderer home – no shame in that,

nor any sin: a rabbit for the pot, a brace of quail,

and nothing to confess, should there be warmth

and laughter in the house (a hut, no more,

under the cold facade their hands have raised

to someone else’s god, a stone conclusion,

while the old life bides its time)

nothing to be refused, where there is hearth

and humour and the fleet

mysterium that runs from skin to skin:

a mischief in the eye, a sly remark,

a live cat lapping the cream