Timothy Lees, Sculptor and Member of the Master Carvers Association, describes the challenges and pleasures of working with stone.

Artistry in stone – a masterly craft

Working stone is a hard but rewarding job.  Knowledge of carving comes mainly from trials and experience and not from books and papers.  Often this technical information is passed down from one carver to another, like an inheritance.  Trade bodies like the Master Carvers encourage the profession to get together to exchange ideas and experience.

In the past, many elements of the working process were divided up to promote efficiency, so a carver might specialise in ornament or statuary, or even solely drapery.  If a young apprentice was good at smoothing and polishing, he might find himself stuck with abrasives and files for many years.  A sculptor was someone who could invent and create a new piece, rather than work to an architect’s drawing or make a decent copy of an antique piece.  Nowadays, these sorts of division only exist in the marble industry.

First choose your stone
Before any work is done, a block of stone has to be selected.  It is possible to rely on the quarry to select a vent and shake free a piece of stone, but for a special project, it is always best to visit the quarry to inspect the blocks in person, particularly for a piece of statuary marble.  In bright sunlight, there are blocks of many different grades of white marble and these can easily be mistaken for each other.

Surfaces are often obscured by slurry and the close stacking of blocks, which can weigh many tonnes, can discourage inspection.  Washing the block with fresh water can expose the internal veining as well as reveal defects.  When a block dries out, the defects remain wet and will show up a darker colour.  A small crystal size indicates a harder marble, one that will polish better and is more resistant to wear.

The best statuary marble is one that verges on the ochre rather than the greyish in colour, and does not have a sugary texture.

The larger the block required, the less likely it is to be free from defects.  Another useful test for defects is to strike the block with the blunt end of a steel chisel and to listen to the ring.  A hollow sound indicates a fault.

In addition to the crystal size and colour, another important aspect which has to be considered is the stratification.  This is not always apparent in freestones and marble, but always exists.  Wherever possible, the work has to be placed so that the bedding planes are at right angles to the loading pressure in a structure.  The work has to be cut along the grain rather than across it, and positioned within a block so that protuberances within a carving are not at risk of failure from parallel grains, providing a plane of weakness.

For smaller elements, the carvers rely on the skills of the sawyer, who cuts the blocks on a diamond saw into the required sizes with as little waste as possible.  For accuracies of up to one millimetre, the equipment has to be in very good condition, with a low tolerance of error.

Enrichment
A great deal of the work of carvers is involved in the enrichment of mouldings.  This can include traditional patterns such as ‘egg and dart’, ‘waterleaf’, ‘dentil’ and numerous other inventions.

Before the initial carving, all the elements of a moulding have to be correctly fitted together, as lengths cannot be trimmed once an enrichment has been cut.  The drawings of the enrichments on the mouldings have to be calculated so that the returns are symmetrical and the carving on the mitres finish on either a whole or a half element.

Accurate setting-out is the key to a successful job.  The enrichment has to be cut with a sharp chisel, in a methodical way, to ensure consistency throughout.  In practice, this means to cut the left-hand side of, say, the eggs in the ‘egg and dart’ enrichment, and then to go back along the line to make sure the depth of the last one cut is the same as the first.  The cutting then has to be repeated along the right-hand side.

It is also important to have the same hand cutting each element, as each carver has a slightly different touch, like handwriting.  This is not always possible in a big project.  Different shaped chisels are used for different types of cut, and these are individually ground to fit each job.  The work can then be rubbed smooth with carborundum, or left ‘off the chisel’ if the work is to be seen at a distance.

Accuracy in artistry
In carving something more elaborate, such as a floral scroll in low relief, the carving is often set below the surface, surrounded by a moulding.  This provides a difficulty in that it is hard to measure the back surface, which should really be flat, like a mirror.

Initially, the design is carefully drawn onto the flat surface, and then the depth to the back surface is cut in wherever possible, measured accurately with a depth gauge and marked with a pencil spot.  These pencil spots remain until virtually the end of the carving.  The depths to the carved elements are cut and the design redrawn on the new surfaces.

Once the relative positions of each of the elements of the design are found, these can then be roughly shaped.  At this stage, a judgement is made as to the relative weights of the elements, and an adjustment made, if necessary.  This is because when a design is realised in three dimensions, its surface has a greater area than on a two-dimensional drawing and there is more room.  As the design is drawn and redrawn on fresh surfaces, care must be taken to make sure it does not drift, by constantly checking and re-checking from fixed points.

As the floral scroll is shaped, the back surface is flattened off closer and closer to the pencil spots, and the very low relief work scratched into place.  More and more detail is carved into the surface of the elements.  When the surface is correct, the carver may begin to undercut the various elements, keeping the whole design balanced.  Finally, the surface is rubbed smooth with carborundum papers, going through the grades until the surface is consistently fine.

About the author
Timothy Lees is an Associate Member of the Royal British Sculptors, and an elected member of the Master Carvers Association.  He was a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellow in 2003, studying in Rome.

In 2003, Timothy won a commendation in the Stone Federation of Great Britain Craftsmanship Awards for work at Stowe Landscape Gardens, and in 2004, he won the Craftsmanship Award for work at Castletown Cox, Eire, both with Cliveden Conservation as main contractor.

He has worked as a freelance sculptor for more than 20 years, and has taught stone carving at The City and Guilds of London Art School.

For further information contact Timothy Lees at: timothylees@supanet.com or visit: www.timothylees.com