A making group
Made by Cutting
Taken out of a bed in blocks and dressed to a face. Two entries, and they are opposites: one was cut close by because it was cheap, the other was ordered from the far side of the state because nothing cheap would do the job.
What cutting imposes
A cut piece is a piece, not a unit. Nothing else in this catalogue is like that.
A brick is one of a thousand; if one is short, the wall absorbs it. A cut stone is made for a place, to a number, from a drawing that already exists. Which means the cutting group is the only group where a mistake on paper turns into a solid object that is paid for and useless.
Three consequences follow, and they follow for both entries:
- The design comes before the material, not after it
- Delivery has to be scheduled against the masonry rather than stockpiled
- Breakage in transit stops work, because there is no substitute on the site
What decides which stone
Not appearance. What a stone can be asked to do.
A loosely cemented sandstone can be cut cheaply and cannot hold a fine edge, span an opening or stand upright in a wet position. A tighter one can do all three and costs several times as much delivered. So the local bed sits in the lowest courses and the ordered stone appears exactly where a piece must be strong and shapely at once.
What this group is not
It is not a portrait of a quarry town. The two entries here are about beds and about what was dressed out of them, and the word quarry is used only to name a place a stone came from. A town cutting itself out of its own ledge is a real subject and it is somebody else's.