Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Whispers of Lincoln


Dean's eye, Lincoln Cathedral
The past couple of weeks I've begun a secondary project in addition to the Jacobean fire surround. This time I'm assisting one of our seniors in carving a gothic rose window. Very exciting for me as it introduces to me new concepts in carving as extruding profiles in curvilinear fashion and ornamentation.

Professor Simeon Warren did his carving internship at Lincoln cathedral so it was decided to use the rose windows of the north and south transepts, the dean's and bishop's "eye" respectively, as inspiration for the design. Of course our version is far more simplified. Even so, it will measure 5 feet in diametre and weigh several hundred pounds. The finished work will be installed in the oculus window of the historic Trolley Barn, the "new" location of the American College of the Building Arts for the 2016/2017 academic year.


After spending some time in the yard rough cutting the Indiana limestone, I had my two pieces for the window ready to begin. After applying a template, the goal is to square up the three ends the tracery so that the template can be drawn through and applied to the reverse side. Fortunately, we had a lovely visit from post graduate students matriculated in the traditional architecture design studio of Judson University to whom I was able to demonstrate this process. We went out to a local brewery afterwards where the students had tons of questions and expressed their excitement from experiencing the craft of stone carving firsthand.

Whereas I'm just getting started, my senior colleague is much further along. He has two of the tracery pieces completed awaiting ornamentation.

This afternoon, Professor Warren spent some time with us demonstrating techniques for carving ornamentation in limestone. A scrolling floriated vine was decided upon to enrich the cavetto profile of the tracery. Local floral varieties of a four petal dogwood and a five petal jasmine, the South Carolina state flower, were selected. Indiana limestone is a bit "plucky" or coarse grained so we're still working to simplify the details accordingly. Looking forward to truly concentrating on this project in earnest as a senior myself next semester!

Dean Emeritus, Professor Simeon Warren

Contributed by Patrick Webb

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