Portland quarries and stone - an artist's view - Mark Dunhill
The Quarry Space
The Quarry is both a deconstructed space and a constructed space. In the past, quarrymen piled and stacked unwanted blocks of stone into giant drystone walls and banks, creating a series of corridors that led from one rock clearing or rock face to another. In one or two places an original core of land can be seen, showing the layering of the rock from the thin ragstones at the top to the whitbed blocks at the bottom. These enormous drystone walls contain a strong architectural and sculptural language, creating a curious sense of scale.
The great stone buildings of the past differ fundamentally from those in the present in that, before the introduction of reinforced concrete, buildings relied on structures based on compression as opposed to tension. The philosophical and emotional difference created by these opposing construction methods is more often better felt than understood. The piling up of solid block on top of solid block expresses and demonstrates a sense of gravity, which we understand through our bodies, and tends to be more legible and understandable.
Origin
Portland stone is the finest sedimentary limestone in England and has many unique qualities. Deposited in layers under warm sea water teeming with animal and plant life, it solidified and calcified as the water disappeared. Evidence of shell creatures proliferate in the stone. Large ammonite fossils have been found on Portland; their powerful spiral form has become a symbol of the place. The stone carries with it a strong sense of its origins, and to carve it is to be (consciously or not) in touch with the idea of transformation - liquid to solid, to hot to cold, dark to light, soft to hard, small to large, life to death.
Light
Portland stone has a capacity to both absorb and reflect light. In bright sunlight, a freshly quarried block is dazzlingly luminous - carving a block can seem like cutting into a block of light, creating darkness with each cut of the chisel. As the shadow of each mark intensifies, so the light in the stone increases through contrast.
Sound
The stone transmits sound waves through its even brittle granular structure. To test a block for faults, quarrymen tap it with a steel hammer. A good block produces a clear ringing sound which intensifies as the stone is carved into regular forms. The sound of steel hammers and chisels working the stone in a workshop creates patterns and rhythms that can become a kind of mantra. Certainly it creates and sustains a kind of concentration the hands and head of the sculptor or mason, that is a unique and important ingredient to shaping a carving.
Quarrying
The process of 'mining' the stone in the past, using blocks and wedges, takes on a mythical quality when compared to current practice of using dynamite.
"The quarry is itself a powerful inspiration and tribute to the small bands of men that worked it, using blocks and wedges as well as natural layering and fissuring to cut
the stone. Their technique (using neither complex machinery nor explosives) was a mixture of science, intuition and hard teamwork that is a model for us all.
"
(Antony Gormley)
For the sculptor or mason, drilling and splitting stone is an exciting business. Revealing and exposing a freshly split face of stone, that has been hidden since it was formed a millions of years ago, is awe-inspiring. It is a process that is as pragmatic as it is poetic. Squaring off the irregular block was commonly achieved with long-handled pick axes and rivels - a tool with a double axe blade unique to Portland.
Tools and Equipment
The tools and equipment associated with stone cutting, carving and lifting are integral to the process.
To move large blocks of stone, either with simple levers and blocks or with pulleys and machines, is like a performance in its own right, which can become a ritualistic preamble as important as the cutting or carving itself.
One cubic yard of stone weighs one tonne approximately. The fact that sculptors will commonly work on a stone that is many times heavier than themselves reinforces a sense of gravity, scale, balance.