The Merry Month : Thinking of a legacy
Robert Merry, is an independent stone consultant and project manager who ran his own company for 17 years. He also acts as an expert witness. Here he presents his view of the stone industry this month.
Unfortunately it’s 5.30 in the morning. It’s dark. It’s February and cold. I can’t sleep due to a tickly chest – a fledgling infection. Large doses of vitamin C might help. But the chemist doesn’t open for at least three hours.
Despite my discomfort and the early hour, I use this bout of insomnia to think of you, dear reader. Selfless to the end.
As part of my re-hashed New Year resolutions – don’t you find they’re always the same each year and by the end of January you have inevitably slipped back into the old habits? – I decided I wanted to read more about stone. This is a fresh resolution. I don’t think I’ve made it before and therefore hope it will last beyond the end of the month.
When I say read more about stone I really mean buy more books about stone; build up a good quality library that can be passed down to the next generation. Something to leave as a legacy – the Robert Merry Memorial Library. A small ambition, I feel. History of… How to… An Idiot’s Guide… You know the sort of low brow library I am talking about.
Rushing to the nearest search engine I accidently typed in ‘stone books’. There is a book publisher called Stone Books and half way down the web page there are images of books actually made from stone. An article from Newcastle University, Australia, has more images and research notes on their origins. Some are carved as closed bibles, possibly blessed by a priest and used by those who couldn’t read. Others are memorials to the dead, a ‘Book of Life’ or as gifts of thanks.
But I decided my book shelves couldn’t take the weight and while being interesting to own, would do little to further my knowledge of stone.
So I typed in ‘books on stone’ instead and ended up at Amazon, like you do.
There are plentiful tomes on the stones used in cathedrals and churches and I guess a good library should include several of these. No doubt I will buy some in the future. But I wanted something different to start the ‘Memorial Library’. If (or perhaps when) the BBC makes a documentary about my collection (there is nothing wrong with ambition) I need to be able to say something like: “This was my first book; the book that started the collection. It holds a special significance for me and I still use it today.” You know the sort of thing I mean.
Then I thought I could write my own book and have it published and that could be the first book in the library. Perhaps I should start a production company and make the documentary as well – because you need to control the artistic output and preserve the integrity of the project. You don’t want someone else dissing your library bro!
Eventually, having calmed down from this mild dose of megalomania, I found a book called The Stone Project, which is particularly apt for a man starting out on a grand plan.
It’s part of a research project undertaken by Edinburgh University called STONE project (www.stoneproject.org). For it, more than 10,000 photos were taken during a three-year period in 16 countries.
They record sculptors, masons, stone breakers, stone traditions, tools, quarries and people. The book contains beautiful images, as well as reference pictures from the past. My favourite is of men standing in makeshift three sided tin sheds (‘scathie huts’, according to the book) only large enough for one person, chiselling small blocks of granite into setts in Scotland in 1939. Now that’s work!
The essays are well written and relatively easy to read, although the forward is a bit high-falutin’.
Sculpture and carving range in subject from the traditional to the abstract. The Barry X Ball carvings of heads, which I have never seen before, are quite extraordinary.
Most importantly, one of the essays reminds the reader how stone is all around us – both obvious and hidden. It contributes to almost every building in the western hemisphere and beyond – crushed for cement, plaster and concrete, sawn, split or cropped when used as dimensional stone. Glass is made of stone (silica) and in the electronics industry silicon dioxide is just one of the products derived from stones used. There are all kinds of finely ground stones as inert fillers and abrasives in toothpaste and medicine. Limestone is used on the land. The extent to which the rock beneath our feet is used every day in myriad ways is extraordinary, as well as in larger lumps for more traditional decorative finishes, surfaces and works of art.
If you’re thinking of starting your own collection of stone books (or books on stone) this would be an excellent first volume. It’s truly sumptuous and worthy of any collection – even (or, perhaps, especially) that of a delusional megalomaniac like me.