THE ITALIAN MYSTIQUE PROVIDES A BUMP - BUT DOES LOCAL STONE SPEAK TO YOU?

"Speak to me"

It seems to me Arts are local, and are based on local history and local knowledge, not in itself a bad thing, however, Local-ism does not serve the world of art all that well. If there is a lack of local history of stone sculpture, I believe the void is filled by romancing common knowledge about the subject. Common knowledge about stone carving is Irving Stone's version of Michelangelo. So milking Michelangelo's Renaissance stone carving, fills the gap. Savvy stone purveyors, stone workers and stone sculptors work this angle to there advantage to get what I call the Italian bump Marketing at its finest. I too love Italian culture, food, wine, fashion, autos, and art, but like my own history, culture, food, wine, fashion, autos, and art as well. I come from a rich heritage of stone workers, my father and his three brothers were all stone-carvers my three brothers, two brothers-in-law, uncle and nephews. All worked for the largest stone company in the world. None of us Italian. I feel no need to use the Italian bump to promote myself, and refuse to roll my R'S to dazzle the locals. Of course this behavior has be costly, but its a matter of self pride. There must be a better way to generate interest in local stone sculpture, after all the local wine growers found a way to self pride. Remember Duke Ellington: “If it sounds good, it is good.” I say as a stone sculpture, if looks good it is good. Good sculpture doesn’t require a signature of authenticity, or European heritage, it only needs to evoke a emotional response from the viewer to have value.

Idaho travertine

SE Alaska marble

SE Alaska marble

Montana sandstone


FOUR PHOTOS OF MY SCULPTURE

It seems Northwest wine makers found the local climate and soil for grapes equal to Italy, unfortunately our northwest basalt isn’t like European marble for carving, however we to have wonderful carving stone. Its not the stone, but what you do with the stone that makes great art. I am sure you could have the greatest soil and climate in the world but not have good wine if your not a good winemaker. Good stone sculpture is made by good artists. And we have lots of good artists in the Northwest. Personally I take great pride in reading local stone I source myself, even if it is not as romantic as tying myself to Italian Mystique. There is nothing more satisfying to me then taking a raw stone fragment, and creating a beautiful enduring piece of art. To me the expression reading the stone is often expressed as the stone speaks to me.

Early traveler

Natural cleavage

READING THE STONE

The natural shape of the found local stone defined both their destinies

Early Traveler from SE Alaska. Natural cleavage from New Mexico. 

It seems to me the local stereotype which am calling The Italian Bump in stone carving is a mixture of Michelangelo's genius and savvy Italian business men promoting white Carrara marble. The two elements become indistinguishable and interchangeable. The end result is that Italian marble then becomes the object of desire in itself and is indistinguishable from the quality of the art. So rolling your rs and playing the game becomes as important as knowing your art. All stone sculptors enjoy working on a piece of white marble but there is little reading the stone in white marble, there is nothing to read. Its a matter of removing the material to revel the form in your mind. Not a bad thing, but certainly a different exercise then reading the stone. Its a matter of geometry and knowing your tools. The quality of the sculpture is equal to the quality of the form in your mind. It seems to me that stone sculpture cut from a white Italian marble, accrues the added value of the Italian mystique. Carving Italian white marble has its challenges and creating a art form that is in your mind is not easy and I certainly enjoy that personal challenge but I think carving indigenous marbles truly requires me to read the stone. The stone defines the limits as well as the possibility of the sculpture. This is rarely understood by by non stone carvers and of course gets none of the Italian mystique benefit. In fact it often is viewed as inferior product not measuring up to the Italian myth held by locals. I have often observed that eyes light up and you get the approving look when I tell someone in a low voice, this is a piece of Italian or Greek marble, THE ITALIAN BUMP of importance. The little German village I grew up in, was and still is the home of the largest stone company in the world, also had a fine little German Pilsner brewery but we as locals, rarely drank it, its strange how often local people think something from someplace else must be better. Best to milk the Italian mystique if sales is your goal, in many parts of this country.

My David carved from local marble

An image conceived in the mind, and brought to life by removing material to fit mental image.

So even though Northwest wine makers seem to have had some success at overcoming the Italian promotion machine, I don’t think local stone, or modern day sculptors sculptors, will ever be fully accepted as equals to Italian stone or modern day Italian artists. Its to hard to overcome Italian marketing, after all, we all understand they make the best food, the best wine, the best cars, the best fashion, and due to there Mediterranean dark skin, the men seem to get better looking as the age, just the opposite as my ruddy German complexion, it seems so unfair. But I do what I can. Growing up in a Lake Wobegon environment has made me humble and accepting of my place in the wonderful world of Art.

There's Marble in Them There Islands, Part 3

There is a wealth of misinformation surrounding the marble industry. One example is illustrated here. Many people assume marble has value. Over the years I have had prospectors and land owners come to me with accounts describing the number of acres of marble they have. Always accompanied with the statement of inexhaustible supply. Or how often individuals ask me if I would store, or buy salvaged marble slabs from them.

Marble mill blocks in the rain forest

25-foot long mill blocks left over from the Juneau Capitol job

To many the idea of thousands of already-quarried marble blocks lying abandoned in the rain forest of SE Alaska seems preposterous. Yet these blocks have laid peacefully on Marble Island Alaska for over one hundred years. There must be some reason for this.

Swimming in an abandoned quarry

Through a romantic lens, marble mill blocks in your back yard would seem to harbor value, however, as a grizzled stone industry entrepreneur, I realize stone in itself has little value. It only acquires value when you invest your time and money in it. This is typically not understood by prospectors and site owners since from their perspective the stone on their land has value and they expect monetary rewards leaving the risk and investment to someone else. I have always found this to be the case. Marble fever like Gold fever. Easy to understand. In this case the marble blocks have to be transported to a location with infrastructure to saw the blocks into slabs. No such place exists in Alaska. Finished slabs may have value. Risky business, in the stone industry you are competing against the world in sawing technology costs. USA, India, China, Brazil, Italy, Spain, all tough customers to compete with locally.

The dreamer looks at this situation and thinks it must be possible to set up a diamond wire saw and saw one slab at a time, a technology he has seen in stone journals or television specials. (This single wire technology may work in some situations but will not work well in the competitive slab market.) This stone is so unique, has such historic value that surely people will pay what it costs to produce locally. After all we live in an age of local is better. Such naivete. (See my essay Local Knowledge). For the business reality is, white marble competes with other white marble for the white marble market. Few people are discriminating enough to see the difference between them when they are spending their money. Many a local architect or potential commercial or residential customer inquires about using a local material only to say upon receiving your proposal, what do you mean local material costs more then Carrara shipped all the way from Italy.

Everyone who travels to the Apuane Alps looks at the great marble mountains with wonder and romance, only the Italians can generate, as they do with so many products, but it's a rare tourist who stops by the stone factories below, churning out slabs of marble and granite from mill blocks shipped in from throughout the world to be gang sawed with great efficiency then shipped by container back to the world at ocean fright rates. ITS ALL ABOUT GANGSAWING EFFICENCY, ALWAYS HAS BEEN SINCE 1950.

Vermont Marble Company did just that around the turn of the century, setting up gang saws in Tacoma and San Francisco and supplied thousands of square feet of white marble for commercial building throughout the west until the bottom dropped out of construction around 1929. The Italians developed faster and cheaper sawing systems than was done in the USA. This along with international port to port freight rates gave Carrara a competitive edge.

It's a rare and special American who is willing to pay the cost of local material for his or her home or commercial project. Italian romance is hard to overcome since it is also the cheapest. It seems to me that the primary reason all these saw blocks languish in the rain forest is because of international competition for white marble provided by massive sawing economies of scale and international ocean fright rates.

So why doesn’t some wealthy investor see this opportunity and set up a modern gang saw operation in Seattle or San Francisco and barge these saw blocks there and provide local material at a slightly higher cost then Carrara? It would be to risky -- one color is not enough to sustain a sawmill. The volume of sales would never pay the costs. One only has to spend a little time on the internet to see what a silly idea it would be today. Marble brokers have the world at there fingertips with much less risk.

I think environmentalists (I studied physical geography, biology, and urban studies in college in the 1970s planing to be an environmental planner ) who speak of local products being more environmentally friendly do not take into consideration modern container shipping.

I always smile to myself when someone tells me they used concrete, poured on top their kitchen counters rather then foreign granite. There jaw usually drops when I ask them if they think blasting limestone from eastern Oregon, crushing it, then cooking it up to 2500 degrees releasing noxious gases, then trucking it to Portland, then dredging the Willamette river for sand, mixing it up and pouring it on to your ever expanding and contracting wooden counters then sealing it with some chemical so the man made limestone won't immediately react with your food, is more environmentally friendly then drilling and splitting a stone mill block from the ground sawing and grinding it with diamond blades (no chemicals only abrasion) then port to port container shipping is more environmentally friendly? REALLY. Some trendy ideas just fool the general public and they get stuck with a vastly inferior counter at the same cost as natural stone and you had a guy who knew how to use a trowel rather then a master craftsmen do your job, such a deal.

Some photos of local fabrication and finished stone counter at Conrad Stonecutter in Portland, Oregon 

Local use of local stone, in this instance, as much as I would like to see it happen, will likely never occur. But we can take the raw product, stone slabs, from throughout the world and add value locally, a remarkably unique business in today’s US economic situation Just what this country needs.

I knew all this as I tramped about the Alaskan rain forest looking at indigenous marble resources

WHAT THEN TO DO WITH THIS BEATUFUL ALASKAN MARBLE

Chapter 4.

Alaskan mill blocks in Portland

How Are You Inspired?

I once asked a friend, what do you think was on the mind of the woodcarver when he was carving a wall sculpture he had purchased. I think I may have insulted him, for he ignored the question. Of course art doesn’t need explanation, it only has to evoke some emotion to give it meaning. However it seems to me it would be nice to think the artist was thinking of something when he created the art. Maybe I am being cynical to ask for this in art, I don't know.

I often talk of the barriers to stone carving, but I also think stone carvers are lucky in that they have so many ways their medium can inspire them. Stone speaks, so to say. I can't imagine a chunk of clay or a blank canvas inspiring me the way stone does. The stone provides both the limitations and the possibilities for me. This makes it a special art form. Every piece of stone has its own specific characteristics, one may try, but its unlikely that a favorable result will happen if the artist misreads the stone. To be STONEWISE is a real asset. Not to be, shows. The nicest compliment I ever received came at a stone sculpture event when a man told me, “Joe, you read the stone like no one else. ” Never forgot that. Experience helps in stone carving.

MENTAL IMAGING

THE DAVID

Irving Stone popularized the idea that Michelangelo could see a form within the stone. Of course, what does that say? Does an artist paint outside the canvas? My guess is that Michelangelo had a romantic vision that he felt had popular support, and found the largest block of stone he could get, to carve it out. It was all in his head. Mental imaging, genius indeed. From that point on it was all technical skill and endurance. I suspect he established benchmarks in the block so as to keep the proportions he wanted. Its hard for me to imagine the skills he must have had, as well as his artistic vocabulary. This is an extreme example of the most common approach to stone subtraction to get the desired three-dimensional form . imaged. It seems to me this what most all artists must do to create there art. I have never been good at this. But there are many other ways in stone carving for people like me.

COLOR INSPIRATION

I think this is a real plus, for the stone carver, who may be mental imagine impaired. What is one to do with a light pink marble? Carve a animal, or an abstract? Not likely, more likely the human form, most often feminine. For most stone carvers, basalt almost demands a Noguchi like form. Noguchi spent time in Japan's basalt islands working basalt so it was a natural for him. Cut a side away, leave a crusty side and polish another and you're done. Stone speaks. Pure white, to me, almost demands a youthful form. That’s why I did my David in the whitest marble I will ever get, which came from Mt Calder, Alaska. (See my blog “The Making of My David”) The translucence of alabaster and onyx seem to demand natural forms, flowers and foliage etc. Color can be masculine or feminine. Does a gray sandstone want to make you carve a flower? I think color is a great source of inspiration that is unique to stone carving.

VEINING

I have no heavily veined marbles. If I did, it would likely be used for either an animal form or an abstract, where the beauty of the stone stands alone. The artist only has to bring out the stone's character Many a stone carver has found that heavy veining does not work on a head but great for a free form. Heavy veining in a stone makes it sing.

THE SHAPE OF THE STONE

The most uninspiring shape I can imagine is cubical. It demands pure artistic mental imagining No doubt about it. See the shape in your head and subtract material to free the form imagined. I find this hard to do. On the other hand a difficult shape like a triangle can easily lead me to the New Mexico sculpture pictured. Remember, stone carving is a tough art form and most carvers I have known remove as little stone as possible to get the form they want. The half circle shape definitely inspired me to create Men at Work.

STONE LOCATION AND FOUND ART

Early Traveler

Practicing Physics

Glacial Activity

I found “Early Traveler” on a beach in SE Alaska where scientists now say that men first came over the Bering Strait to North America. An artist friend, Cindy Dececco, thought she saw a human form there. It immediately jumped right out at me and “Early Traveler” was born. Even the red color worked this time. So “Early Traveler” had shape, location and color to inspire me . What an easy job for me. “Practicing Physics” was pure found art I found these two pieces of quartz on Wadleigh Island Alaska and attached them to a green argillite less then 10 miles away on Prince of Wales, Alaska. “Glacial Activity” came from a road trip and hiking in Montana’s Glacier National Park. The green and red stone forming G. N. P. Are very inspiring to all basalt basin residents like me.

NATURAL WEATHERING OF STONE

Natural Cleavage

Romance

Gibson

The manner in which natural processes weather stone is a great form of inspiration to me. I have no photos, but I know the skin on basalt is a big part of basalt carving. My favorite stone by far is marble, preferably a northwest marble weathered by wind and rain. Chinese culture has long been enchanted with nature's weathering process on marble, They have elevated it to monumental proportions in what they call scholar stones. The Chinese call this Wuxi and the Japanese use the word Suiseki. The beaches of SE Alaska are weathered by tide coming and going. The photo I took in the Prior Mountains in Montana showing weathering from rain. I used to have a geography professor who would say we came just in time, one million years earlier or later it wouldn’t be the same as we arrived at our field studies. For me weathered local marble is a great source of inspiration.

TRIBUTARY ART

The Leg Lamp

High Style

My Idaho travertine leg lamp is a salute to Jean Shepard, the author. Some day I hope to put Garrison Keillor’s fishing dog on one side; and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, with a fishing pole, on the other side. Sadly no space left for Will Rogers in my ranking system. All four of these great American observers of the human condition deserve a stone carver salute. “High Style”, a tip of the hat to the human fixation on appearance and the fashion industry. There is nothing like an elegant woman to get my attention. Wonderful inspiration.

THEMATIC SCULPTURE

Apples and Pears

Apples and Pears

Apples and Pears

I have always felt that comparing apples and oranges just doesn’t work well. It's a lot more fun to compare male and female with apples and pears. This idea can turn many ways from abstract to rigidly formal. I like it, and hope to develop this concept many ways in the future. The great book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance struggles with creativity, so I certainly would not presume to know where creativity like apples and pears come from, it's way beyond me, it just is.

CLASSICAL ART

Human forms

Carving the human form never gets old. It's a great challenge to get the proportions the way you want, never easy. I am prejudiced but I feel that a lot of abstract stone carving I see is merely tool manipulation. As an old stone fabricator in the industry for so many years I just smile to myself and say looks like he got a new core drill or chain saw etc. Classical form demand classical ability, not tool tricks. Even though I do a lot of tool tricks myself . See my stone bowls below, a subject of future essay. In the end I hope anyone who looks at my sculpture will know what was on my mind when I carved it.

Tool tricks

ARE YOU INSPIRED, HAVE YOU BEEN INSPIRED?

Twenty frequent comments from visitors at my stone sculpture studio

The stone yard

1 Do you know Mary Jo? (Mary Jo Anderson is a well-known Oregon sculptor)

2 I know a person who makes sculpture.

3 What are those statues for?

4 Do you make bubble stones?

5 Do you make fountains?

6 How long did it take to make that?

7 Have you been to Italy? I went there after college.

8 Have you read the book about Michelangelo?

9 He could see the form within the stone.

10 Do you get you stone from Italy?

11 All that freight must cost a lot.

12 I like the way you left the the holes.

13 Is that a crack?

14 Do you ever hit it too hard and crack it off? HO HO

15 How come it isn’t smooth all over?

16 Is that finished?

17 Looking at rough marble boulders, what's that?

18 I took a sculpture class in college.

19 Where do get your ideas?

20 I have always felt a connection with stone.

22 QUESTIONS I WISH VISITORS WOULD ASK AT MY SCULPTURE YARD

1 What is that? (Looking at my David)

2 How come I don’t see stone sculpture in Portland?

3 What is the process you use to carve stone?

4 Where does this stone come from?

5 What is the difference between marble and basalt and granite?

7 Why do you carve marble instead of granite or basalt?

7 Where did you learn? What tools do you use ?

8 Why do you do this? When did you start carving stone?

9 What is the difference between bronze sculpture and stone sculpture?

10 Do we have any marble or limestone in Oregon? Why not ?

11 How do you make the stone look so different in different places?

12 Why do you do figurative art? It seems so old fashioned.

13 What's the meaning of Apples and Pears?

14 Do you visualize the finished sculpture before you start carving?

15 Do various types of stone direct you to do different things with it?

16 Are there some stones that you don’t like to work with?

17 Where do you get this stone, and how do you determine what to do with it ?

18 Why don’t you show at galleries ?

19 Who teaches stone carving in Oregon?

20 What makes stone carving unique from other forms of art?

21 Stone carving seems so rare. There must be some barriers to doing it, what are they?

22 Why is stone carving so expensive ?

Why Blog About Stone??

Socrates was a stonecutter. I suspect his wife wanted more stonecutting and less dialogue. But I am sure he would probably blog if he was still here.

I don’t know why I do stone sculpture, or why I want to write about my passion for stone, and its history, as well as its impact on the urban environment. As a friend of mine told me “writing and art work for slave wages and the master rarely delivers fans.” Nevertheless just as I wrote in my artist’s statement many years ago I solicit audience participation, for my stone sculpture and blogging, for they only need to evoke emotion to be meaningful.


To begin, I have noticed that there is not a good definition of a stonecutter on Google. This is one taken from a turn-of-the-century stonecutter technical manual.” One who cuts a stone by hand to a specific size to fit in a specific location among other cut stone pieces making the whole, most often for a building.” Kind of dry but I think it explains why many stone fabrication and installation business east of the Mississippi are titled ______ cut stone company. It’s an historical precedent. In fact in my 50 years of working within the stone industry I have found that few people understand how stone flows into our lives, much less its history.

This may help:

Quarrymen: quarry stone blocks                      Lumberjacks: harvest logs|


Stone is sawed in: sawmills                             Logs are sawed sawmills|


Stone brokers buy: stone slabs                         Lumber yards buy : finished lumber|

At this point customers select materials from stone supply yards to be fabricated and installed on their projects.

Stone fabricator cuts to size & details              Cabinet builder builds cabinets

 |
Stone is installed by marble mason                    Cabinets are installed by finish carpenter

Each of these general areas tend to be specialized. That is, you would not expect a lumberjack to build your cabinets even though he knows a lot about wood, just as a quarryman isn't interested in fabricating your kitchen counter tops, it can become a little less clear about who is capable of what when you further define the general areas for example in the general area of saw mills you may find stone engineers, stone sayers, stone polishers, stone cutters, stone carvers, stone lettering experts, stone sculptors, etc. -- all separate and unique trades. The same is true for stone fabricators.

All these trades and the people within them have interesting stories that I will be blogging about.

Joseph Conrad
March 2011 edited November 2013

STONECUTTERS URBAN ECOLOGY 101: URBAN THERAPY

Living and walking about a city is always an exciting experience for me as a stone history buff. Something new around every corner. It's like a road cut for a geologist or a walk in the forest for an ecologist. Up to now Chicago is my favorite city, although my son says new york is better.

I have a simple 4-step program that may help you enjoy your urban walks as well. It’s an urban ecology starter that works for me.

I believe there have been four major changes in the stone industry since 1850 which have helped define the urban landscape. I call them footprints in stone. Recognizing these technologies helps me put these building forms into a time frame. Maybe not perfect because there is overlap and digression, just as there is in fashion, but it’s a useful historical reference system, and a sense of history never hurts. Hopefully it will help to make one more comfortable in our urban environment.

1 - Local stone on stone 1850-1910

In this era, stone was locally quarried and cut by hand as i describe in my “Lost Trade of Stonecutting” blog. It is a totally romantic period, before compressed air, or useful gangsaws. This technology certainly provided a sense of place to urban areas. Cities were defined by local geology. It's the era of the vagabond stonecutter going from job to job, city to city. Many architects came out of stonecutter backgrounds at this time since stone was the fundamental building material. Cities in this era reflected the ground they were built on, giving rise to urban identities defined by stonework.

Local Stone on Stone, here Portland Oregon, Basalt and Sandstone 

2 - Deep drilled hammer face 1900-1930

This technology was developed with the invention of useful compressed air. It often used local stone as well if good building stone was available. However if there was no local stone suitable for architectural construction, regional granite was often used. Softer stones, limestone and sandstones, would still often be cut by hand locally.

Stone was removed from quarries by drilling and blasting horizontal beds and drilling vertical blocks to millbock sizes. Slabs were split or sawed  to be hammer finished with multiple air hammers called drifters or shot gangsaws  this was the era when stone cutting was infamous for dustborn ailments. We call silicosis most often caused by hitting the stone with air hammers to shape.

This was the era when my father and his three brothers first started in the stone trade. Faces of building became smooth but not polished with beautiful details. Columns were cut on lathes. Flute often cut by hand with hand-held hammering tools. Intricate details including relief sculpture were put into building facades in granite as well as sandstone and limestone. Stonecutters were employed at job sites as well as quarry fabrication sites. This is the era when cutting and shaping of stone went from local to regional fabrication facilities. These regional faculties developed sophisticated equipment and and often had multiple stone resources. Beautiful permanent building, stone on stone walls were built. Many of these buildings have been gutted out, and refitted, and still serve as great urban architecture for us to enjoy even today.

Deep drilled hammer face.  Typical rustication with columns and carving of this period in Granite

3 - polished smooth face 1925-1970

The next stone building type totally changed the relationship between the local stone economy with both people, and the local stone forms. The industry separated local knowledge about stone since it become something that arrived by truck or train from a distant fabrication source. This precut cut stone was shipped ready to put on the face of building  for the first time. Stone no longer was cut or quarried locally. Stone is no longer a structural building component, but rather it becomes a veneer over a concrete structure.

The modern gang saw made low cost fabrication of 2-inch and thicker slabs, or what we call dimension stone possible. Huge surface grinders brought stone slabs to a high finish, then they were sawed to size and sent to local building sites to cover concrete structures as decorative and protective veneers. This new building process, the modern high-rise elevator-equipped building, became covered in stone, terracotta, or brick, all as veneers, likely none of it local.

These production facilities were not placed locally but rather close to the source of quality and quantity stone quarries. Varieties of color being important. The stone blocks were shipped by rail to these centrally located modern fabrication plants. There stone fabrication expertise flourished. Finished cut to size building skins were then sent to local job sites for a new trade called stone setters to install. This forced the separation of the local knowledge of stone, and its origin, and how it is fabricated. This all happened in my father's and my lifetime.

 Granite and Marble veneer covering a concrete building. Here Morton gneiss and Georgia granite in Portland Oregon

4 - International thin cut stone 1970-2011

The final stone footprint once again came with a breakthrough in mass gangsaw cutting. This came about with the ability to mass cut thin slabs by putting post tension in diamond or shot gangsaw blades, fast mass production of multiple slabs brought costs of stone down for building construction and made stone slab prices such that the general public could afford stone counters for the first time. Suddenly there was a stone revolution all over the world.

I believe this technology started in Germany and Italy. Even today if you go to the Italian stone fabrication centers at the base of the aupanies you will see thousands of blocks of stone drilled out from quarries all over the word to be sawed with these gangsaws – although American, south American and Asian facilities are catching up by using this technology.

But the important point for the urban walker is that once again, stone is used as integral part of the building structure. Steel skeletons were erected with floors floating free of concrete side walls. Their weight is transferred down by transferring it to vertical steel supports. What is called curtain walls, a very descriptive term, the glass and stone are mounted on horizontal frames with their mass also transferred to vertical steel supports. Thus the glass and stone skins become the protective skin of the structure. Stone is once again a useful and important structural component of the building. This makes stone curtain walls a practical and economical building component, not just a pretty face covering concrete. Economical mass production of stone slabs certainly changed the urban landscape.

This is the current state of high rise construction. Thankfully design professionals soften the building by employing historical stone elements to soften this harsh building system. I call them urban furniture to ease our eyes. Sculpture is used this way as well. It would be a pretty bleak world if curtain wall construction was not offset this way. Of course traditional tricks of texture and color soften these structures as well. Future blogs.

International thin set here south American granite sawed in Italy in Portland, Oregon

I hope this brief survey of stone footprints makes your urban experience more enjoyable, for as a friend once told me many years ago, i have always looked at the shoes behind the glass, while you looked at the way they the shoes were housed. I think a little history along with how things are done can often be therapeutic to the soul.

Form As A Result of Historic Process

They say form follows function

This paper says sometimes form is a result of historic process

I published an article in stone world magazine in 1996, where i introduced a concept I called "inside out design." Looking at it 15 years later, I still believe it is a good article even though I have no reason to believe any one ever read it. Never the less 25 years and one half dozen articles later I still attempt to provoke minds, for better or worse.

I have read that capitols on stone columns imitate tree limbs on original wood columns. To me this makes sense, particularly since I have seen small tree trunks used this way to support wooden boards for use as platforms to pour concrete roofs in colonial Mexico.

Historians would have you believe that if you don’t know the difference between Corinthian, Doric, or Ionic capitols, your education is incomplete. But to me I never cared, it seemed pointless, but I do like the tree branch concept, which probably casts a shadow on my education.

I believe, based on personal observation gleaned from 50 years in the stone business, that the technology within industry provides designers basic building blocks to work with. The possibilities and limitations of the medium you are working in change through time. These changes provide design professionals an ever-changing variety of possibilities. This all seems logical and apparent to most of us.

However, what is interesting are those limitations of past technologies, that become permanent design staples all around us. Learning to recognize these technological glitches to me provides a more meaningful appreciation of the design environment. It goes back to the tree limb thing, I think. For example, walking through an historic neighborhood with a craftsman who has knowledge of wood construction, or walking the streets of a city with a stone worker interested in history, is much more fun than taking a tour and having someone tell you the architectural style and the name of the architect who designed it. I think this suggests that I am not only interested in the designers name but maybe my interest is more centered on the technology and people working on the project.

I am sure that every construction medium could chime in here -- it would be interesting to hear other thoughts. My experience is with stone which has traditionally been the provider of urban forms or designer building blocks.

Here are a few examples to open the discussion:

The quirk miter. A staple of urban stone design

Problem: stone is fragile - miters don’t work - they chip

Quirk Miter

Solution: split and pitch or saw and grind strong edge - A staple of urban stone architecture.

Rustification

The historic difficulty of holding sharp corners before modern equipment is probably the reason for rustification. That is a term I use to describe softening the edges of each stone with a bevel or round. This seems to have become a staple of the stone imitation industry, terracotta. By employing various bevels, rounds and offsets designers have been able to create beautiful designs in building forms in both stone and terracotta. My stonecutter father used to say ‘it all comes out in the wash’. The chips that is. (“wash” being a term stonecutters use for bevel.)

United States Customs House, downtown Portland

Nothing worse then looking at an old stone building with close-fitting joints without details of some sort separating the stones and seeing the front, or what stonecutters call the face of the stone weave in and out.

Lincoln Hall, Portland State University

35 years ago a design firm asked me how to get a elegant look in their entry lobby without paying a high price. I advised them to bevel the edges of marble tiles to make them appear like blocks of stone. They did and it seemed to come out great. This technique seemed to be used quite often . The beautiful use of stone tiles in mall architecture still fascinates me, even though I don’t frequent malls much. Stone use in mall design makes a strong statement, good or bad.

Heads

Because gang sawing stone slabs has always been a difficult and imprecise job, granite veneer slabs have often employed a structure called the head in architectural projects, that is corners, are dealt with by specifying a given fixed dimension at butt joints.

Head

Problem of uneven thickness solved at minimal cost:

Even today my son often uses a CNC stone router to plane all exposed edges on kitchen counter projects to provide a uniform edge. It is one of many things that separate an average job from an outstanding counter job. Old tricks in modern stone fabrication.

CNC Stone Router

I have a suspicion that many moldings that have become design staples were originally from wood or stone problems that are now part of our daily lives. Can you think of any?