Disappearing Acts: Stonemasonry

An interesting photo essay from Jon Henley and Sam Frost for The Guardian, showing one of the masons at CWO in Chichester at work. I find it odd that stonemasonry is considered a disappearing trade. My masonry course at the City of Bath College had a waiting list, with people joining the course halfway through. There seemed to be a trend for people who didn’t find any satisfaction with their job wanting to learn more practical skills. I believe part of the problem with the perceived death of the industry lies in the method of construction of new buildings. Stonemasonry is seen as merely a conservation or restoration industry; very few new buildings are made entirely out of stone. The film can be found here.

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2 Responses to Disappearing Acts: Stonemasonry

  1. john pitt says:

    Love your site. I too am a letter carver based in Australia now. I ‘trained’ with Richard Kindersley (on an ad hoc basis), as well as taking lessons from John Skelton. I have yet to check out the films you mention but sure will. You can find some images of my work at my blog
    http://stoneletters.wordpress.com/
    though it’s also about printing in general as I used to do letterpress and still do some typography. Unhappily not much demand for letter carving here, though plenty of stone walls being built.
    I will put a link to your site on mine. Keep in touch. Regards John

    • Your site and your work look great. I thought that mine was the only blog about lettercutting going, but it appears I was wrong. It’s good to see someone else has the same idea as me. I trained with Lida Lopes Cardozo Kindersley, David Kindersley’s widow. I’ve never really done any Letterpress or printing in general, but it’s something I would be interested in.

      By the way, if you’re interested in films, the other lettercutting film I know of is all about Lida and the Cardozo Kinderlsey Workshop and can be seen here. There’s also a little film of a visit to the Workshop, which really shows how little it changes over time.

      Regards, Simon

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