Dec 4, 2025
What Made Roman Stonemasonry Distinctive? Roman stonemasons inherited techniques from the Greeks and Etruscans and subsequently pushed the craft to new engineering and architectural heights. Their work ranged from finely carved marble monuments to massive utilitarian...
Oct 7, 2025
An amazing archaeological discovery in Romania is throwing new light on the advanced stoneworking skills of the Dacians, an ancient civilisation that thrived in the Carpathian region prior to the Roman conquest. While trekking in a forested area near Hunedoara...
Aug 11, 2025
St Paul’s Cathedral is an icon of the London skyline — as much as the Shard, the London Eye, Big Ben and that building with the three fans that are mysteriously never spinning. Wherever you go, you can’t help but notice its looming spire and majestic dome. However, it...
Jun 23, 2025
A quarryman splits or cuts rock in the quarry and extracts the resulting blocks of stone. The cut or split pieces are collected and transported away from the extraction surface for further refinement. A sawyer stonemason cuts these stone blocks into dimension stone,...
May 21, 2025
Naturalistic foliage was a popular decorative detail in the Gothic period, and small animals, birds and people frolic amongst the leaves and flowers. Sometimes the foliage grew into something else: the leaves at Wells Cathedral grow into the head of a man with...
Apr 25, 2025
Soaring Monuments Heavy stones were brought to the site by water or cart. The masons of Laon Cathedral in France, grateful to the oxen that pulled their carts, carved oxen peeking out of the top of the towers. Scaffolding was used to reach higher parts of the...
