Tuesday 1 March 2016

There will be blood

I made contact with my old boss, Simon Verity, last night, ostensibly on the hunt for block Tufa.

A few emails crossed (either over the Atlantic or the North Sea, I'm not sure if he is in Scotland or Philadelphia right now) over enough time for me to drink a few glasses of wine and end up responding to his apology for being such a 'shit' to work for. I suppose I should have said, 'Of course you weren't Simon', but I didn't.

I went to work on some full-sized, classical figures for him just after he had completed a commission for Princess Diana - a fountain for Charles, and the only sculpture she ever commissioned in her short life.

We were shifting two wheelbarrows full of stone chips a day at the beginning. This was no mean feat when you understand that no machinery was involved - all mallets, hammers and chisels. Simon hated air-hammers, and I understand why. They are deafening, and tend to drive all artistic thoughts out of your head when you use them.

I always had the strong impression that I was holding him back in his flights of aesthetic fancy. I am very basic when it comes to safety, and Simon would become utterly exasperated when I suggested that it might be a good idea to try to prevent some disaster or other by spending just a little time making something safe. This is ironic when you consider how much I am currently moaning about the Health and Safety regulations of my current boss.

We decided to push one two-ton, seven foot high block of stone out of the way one day, and because we were shifting all this stuff by hand, our method was to bar it up and put wooden rollers underneath it to trundle it up against a wall. There it would stay for almost a year.

I suggested whacking some wooden wedges beneath it so that it would not fall, and Simon shouted, "Oh go on then!", resentful of the three minutes this would take.

Almost a year later, it was decreed that the block be moved to the centre of the room to be worked on again, and the method for this was to push it away from the wall with an old cart-jack, having removed the wedges. This operation had to be done on my hands and knees, with the help of Martin, the ever so quiet letter-cutter.

Simon was sitting cross-legged on the ground in front, as he chiselled away at the feet of another figure, and I was cranking away at the cart jack, inching it out of a corner so it could be pushed from behind, when I noticed the angle of the edge of the massive block slowly change. It was falling over - right in the path of Simon. Martin - normally utterly silent - quietly said, "Look out".

There wasn't enough time to form any words as I sprang to my feet, so I let out a sort of scream.

I stood at the front of the falling block and grabbed hold of it at the top. I think it must have been just on the point of no return when I did this, and I think I must have been supporting about a quarter of a ton of its two ton weight when Simon also leapt to his feet to help us push it back to an upright position. He would have been flattened if I hadn't stood up earlier, and he would never have made it to New York to complete the figures on the West Front of St John the Divine.

This was one of about three life-threatening incidents. The other major event was the building of the Duke of Beaufort's tomb. I told him that you couldn't use a three-legged tripod to shift a half ton block laterally, but he wouldn't listen. We did get it up and on without damage to the stone - and it only took about 30 seconds - but there was blood.

22 comments:

  1. There has to be good sense on either side... protecting life and limb without being so fearful nothing can get done. Notice I didn't say 'common sense'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes - everything swings one way, then the other.

      Delete
  2. As you've both achieved the white hair stage, there seems something to say for both views.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Didn't realize you worked with Verity. I loved his response (http://blog.classicist.org/?p=6226) to the idiotic plan to move the the New York Public Library stacks out from under the building.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just looked it up. I don't know the issues, but I recognise the hand.

      Delete
  4. Oh that Simon!
    Did he help with finding Tufa? (took me three tries to spell that right, my fingers kept spelling tofu)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes and no. The quarry is out of production. Tufa is to limestone as Tofu is to cheese.

      Delete
    2. No animals were harmed in the making of this rock... Oh Yeah? Then how do you explain all those fossils?

      Delete
  5. Do Health and Safety know about this!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My current Health and Safety team were about 4 years old when this was going on. I wonder if they will make it to our age.

      Delete
  6. I tried to write a response but Google fucked it up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is a lot of this going on with Google right now. Maybe we don't pay enough advertising fees.

      Delete
  7. When I was stone cutting, we didn't even have a winch. It was all very primitive, which is probably why I now suffer from a buggered back.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Where were you stone-cutting, and what were you making, Cro?

      Delete
    2. Here in France. We made window openings, door openings, fireplaces, stone sinks, and other domestic bits and pieces. All rather mundane, but at least we were usually commissioned to match medieval work.

      Delete
  8. 'Very basic when it comes to safety'.....sounds good to me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's all you need really. Nobody deliberately wants to injure themselves unless they are desperate.

      Delete