I am amazed at how many of you want to see more of the pineapple carving process. I have been really looking forward to the weekend, when I have the excuse to get away from it for a couple of days.
On many occasions when my workshop was in the middle of town, a besuited office-worker would enter the dusty shop and watch me for a moment, then express his desire to have a job as simple and satisfying as how he perceived mine to be. It was always a 'he'. Women are far more practical and find romance in much more sensible choices of career, although I have known a few disturbed female stonemasons.
My response was always to ask them to imagine what it would be like to spend all day, every day, covered in dust and hitting a lump of stone over and over again in zero temperatures. None of them would believe me that I truly envied them of their jobs in the Winter, or my prediction that they would not last one hour if they walked out of their office and into my workshop to begin a new life and an eight hour shift. A couple of them even asked if I took on apprentices.
If anyone now asks me how to go about training to be a stonemason with aspirations toward more intricate carving, I tell them to seek employment with a conservation company. If you begin life as a simple mason, that is how it usually ends, after about 40 years of gruelling and unwinnable battles against the most unforgiving enemy that you are ever likely to encounter in the natural world.
I think I have already told you about the one exception to the case, but I will tell you again because he refreshed my faith in humanity with his totally realistic and unromantic attitude.
He was an American tourist who turned up at the doorstep of my workshop one day, standing there and quietly watching me as I hammered away at a block of stone. Eventually, during a lull in the hammering, he came a little closer and I braced myself for the usual outpouring of admiration and respect for this ancient and arcane craft, kept alive by European heroes like me for thousands of years.
Instead, he said, "My GOD. That must be so BORING! How do you stand it, day after day?"
I am sure that once you have finished hammering, chiselling, and carving the fine detail in the stone, it must give you an immense feeling of satisfaction of a job well done.
ReplyDeleteWell, this is one job that you can really compare to the good feeling you get - by contrast - by ceasing to bang your head against a wall. Satisfaction is tempered by always finding fault with the finished article. Anyone who makes something half decent will always see things they should have done, but didn't. What makes the article half decent is when others who are not involved in the process fail to notice the faults.
DeleteHorses for courses Tom. Do they still take on apprentices in places like cathedrals? I would have thought that was perhaps a bit more tolerable and interesting.
ReplyDeleteI cannot think of any cathedral which has its own yard these days, with the possible exception of Chichester. The yards are usually farmed-out to standard private masonry companies - as is everything else. The people who get all the interesting work now are usually conservation companies, and they sub-contract certain individuals to cover skills, expertise or just plain drudgery, which they may not have in-house or even the will to do themselves.
DeleteI'm with the American. We have a stonemasons guild here and apprentices are trained in the skills on local churches and the cathedral. One apprentice remarked that he has made some big mistakes and when you may a mistake there is little you can do about it to make amends.
ReplyDeleteDon't you think that I'm with the American too? That was the whole point of this post. If you make a big mistake which is going to be at eye-level, then you're in trouble. If it is 100 feet up, the only critics are going to be your peers. Also, there is a lot you can do to make amends if you know your business.
DeleteYes I understood it. I often say the wrong thing without meaning to.
DeleteThe apprentice boy was only young. I guessed you would say that.
The big, modern give-away to a cock-up in the workshop is the pervading stench of polyester glue hardening. Young apprentice boys are prone to saying things which don't match up to the whole truth, both positive and negative.
DeleteDon't you ever think about how the stone will endure long after you? Any mark I leave will be fleeting. Not so your mark.
ReplyDeleteThat is a myth. The most enduring marks are spiritual, not physical. As Joni Mitchell said, we are stardust. In the great scheme of things, the temporal difference between stardust and the span of a single species is nothing. Remember Darius the Great. The difference between the skid-mark on John Gray's underpants and the most permanent of any of my accidents is not even a blink in God's eye.
DeleteWhen you compare yourself to eternity, you ARE an eyeblink. But I compared what you leave behind to my own legacy...stone endures.
DeleteBronze is longer lasting in the right conditions. I like looking at stone things made by people whose names have been forgotten.
DeleteI have never cared about my name. I just want to be part of life going on after I am gone. That's all.
DeleteI tend not to look for flaws so unless it is really glaring I do not notice imperfections. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Anything made of stone is going to endure centuries and this is very attractive to me.
ReplyDeleteYes, most people are not that picky about technique. Critics are not so polite. Perfection does not automatically make beauty either, just the opposite in most cases. Nazi classical sculpture is a good example of that.
DeleteA very dear friend acquired an eight foot long sideboard (because her house was that big!) and I wove a beautiful runner for the length of it. The weaving was very fine thread and took me quite some time, but eventually I delivered its beautifully pressed self. The scarf was put on the sideboard and I sat at the table to admire it while she walked up and down, looking, feeling, admiring.
ReplyDeleteAnd then I saw the one weaving error. I gasped and confessed. Where, where, she asked. I would not show here and in the twenty years that scarf lived on the sideboard, neither she nor any guest found it, although it was a "find the weaving error" game at her house often.
And if she every found it, she never confessed it to me.
I think that one error probably enhanced it. To be able to create a game out of it which would last for generations makes the runner that mush more valuable.
DeleteNot mush, but much. That was a little error in an otherwise perfect comment...
DeleteAnother man's working life often looks to someone who is bored with his own. The grass is almost never greener on the other side of the fence.
ReplyDeleteI have had to remind myself of that many times over the last few years.
DeleteI got nothing for this but a knowing smile...
ReplyDelete