Friday 25 September 2015

Sense of scale

Back in in Blighty, back to the old Apple keyboard and back to my old style. I've left the mosquitos down there along with the involuntary plagiarism of Rachel.

You know how you get home and find your house smelling a bit strange - a smell which you hadn't noticed before through familiarity, but one which hits you as soon as you walk in the door?

Well I'm pleased to say that this did not happen to us. Either that or I have lost my sense of smell as well as proportion.

I'm not going to show you my holiday snaps, mainly because I didn't take any. Not one single selfie, unlike the thousands of others at the historical sites.

I'll tell you one thing which struck me as mind-blowing in scale, along with the other mind-blowing things that you are already aware of about Rome in particular and Italy in general.

If I had one penny for every ton of Travertine stone that has been - and still is - quarried and carved throughout the country and elsewhere, I would be one of the world's wealthy people. It is just EVERYWHERE, and in blocks so large that whole edifices are made - and are still being made - with individual units of around 5 tons each.

Pillars, window surrounds, street kerbs, floors, swimming pools - ton after ton after ton, still being quarried at Tivoli as it has been for 2500 years, and sent all over the world.

A lot of people have made a lot more than one penny a ton for it.

Quote from the Emperor Augustus:

I found Rome built of simple brick, and I left her clad in marble.

Not any more she isn't - it was all pulled off to build places like the Vatican. That's not all they had. 390 tons of bronze were taken from the roof of the portico to the Pantheon - just the portico - and melted down to make the 4 gigantic pillars which surround the main altar in S. Pietro. They even had enough left over for a few huge cannons.

Then the cannons were melted down to make two tombs for two Italian kings - and carted back to the Pantheon again where they still are.

It's the scale of it all which lingers in your mind.

13 comments:

  1. Going on holiday in Rome with you must be like holidaying in the Prairies with a farmer extolling the virtues of wheat versus soya beans.

    I went to Topps Tiles today and saw some travertine.tiles. I have never been to Rome.

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    1. Ah yes - chips off the old block.

      Going on holiday with H.I. is pretty similar, but 2 dimensional.

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  2. Everything that ever was on earth still is, and, especially in the case of plastic, will be.

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    1. It has never left Earth in the first place. All this stuff does is change, but only slightly, then revert back to its natural constituents. All humans do is rearrange those constituents for a brief period of time, before they revert.

      'Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair' - Darius the Great.

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  3. What I love about Rome Tom is that the ancient sites - or many of them - are right there alongside the road. And then there are those gorgeous trattoria selling gorgeous pasta dishes the likes of which I find impossible to replicate.

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    1. Well you could replicate it, but it might take you a few thousand years, by which time the pasta would be past its sell-by date.

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  4. Replies
    1. It's so nice to get back to your Strictly Come Dancing alerts, flower arranging in Trelawnyd, chicken biogs and little glimpses into your deeply troubled childhood, with you father actually daring to have a crafty snifter with an old friend whilst you wander around in a dark and frightening wood.

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    2. What upset you last night, a headache?

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    3. Nothing upset me last night. I felt fine.

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  5. We've just clad a bathroom in Travertine (walls and floor). Worth the money.

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    1. I love Travertine, and I love any coarse stone with holes in it - the larger the scale of carving, the better. Portland Roach is the English equivalent, but sadly my clients don't like it as much as I do.

      I once made a circular table from Roach, 5 feet in diameter. One buyer asked how would one get the breadcrumbs out of the holes, and I said that this is what vacuum cleaners are for. He asked if I could fill the holes with resin, and I refused to sell it to him.

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  6. He should have put the table in the center hall and eaten on the granite countertop in the kitchen. This talk of tables reminds me of a red-headed woodworking friend of yours who sold me a long table for my Pulteney Street flat. He also lent his out for illicit trysts. Whatever happened to him?

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