ABSTRACT

The Pleasures of Limestone limestone, a sedimentary rock, as are sandstones and clay conglomerates as well. The sedimentary rocks are those commonly used in building: it is with them that we associate the weathered surfaces which enhance the meanings of stone described in the first chapter. Sedimentary structure, particularly the lie of the beds, gives character to masonry no less than to the cliff. In Ham Hill, Doulting, and in certain of the Bath stones, for instance, soft beds of clay alternate with the purer limestone, an alternation which, though sometimes the cause of weakness, since the clay tends to be washed thin, bestows on masonry a sculptural responsiveness. To this marked bedding of sedimentary rocks is due the ease with which they are handled: since they are inclined to have a laminated fracture in accordance with their beds, and so they are easy to thin. This fact is of immense importance for any consideration of the character of stone carving, so far as its procedure is best illustrated by the cutting of sedimentary rocks. Carving of all stones, we shall find, is essentially a thinning: all sculpture that reverences the stone manifests thinned or flattened forms. The sectional model for the process of carving is a shale bed: every piece of shale or slate possesses a pure laminated structure. Shale is the softer: we may see a bed cut by the sea to almost paper-like tiers of thinness, a flat or plated expanse revealed by the outlying tide, grateful to bare feet, yet possessing between each tier and its neighbour the tiniest and most smooth of precipices. Or we may pick up that perfect piece of sculpture rubbed by the sea, the flattened yet rounded slate whose smooth face can be thrown to skim and leap the waves.