ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore the paradoxes of securing the past while changing it. To do so, we examine the role of craft practice, specifically stonemasonry, in the conservation of Glasgow Cathedral and the wider networks of materials and actors involved. Tracing the different forms of expertise and skilled practice that mediate the Cathedral’s authenticity shows that there are different views on it, but more profoundly there are different ways of enacting what it is. Authenticity is shown to be neither a subjective, discursive construction nor a latent property of historic buildings and monuments waiting to be preserved. Rather, it is a distributed property that emerges through the interactions of people and things.
