Florence!
Have you ever been there? It’s stunning, and if you’re in to architecture then you’ll be in heaven. The Duomo on the cathedral, engineered by Brunelleschi, is just awe-inspiring when you think it was built in the mid 1400s. No cranes or modern equipment to build it, and certainly no cad/cam to design it! I doubt we could do it today.
lots of our masons have done some of their early apprenticeships in florence. Working on the many stunning historic buildings. We have yet to fit any stone fireplaces there! My favourite building is the Strozzi palace: It’s such a daunting building. The Strozzis were rivals of the Medicis, and if you walk round the palace at night time, you get a feel for the bloodiness of that period.
It always amazes me that a period of such incredible creativity was ruled over by such ruthless and bloodthirsty clans. I’d loved to have been around then… I think. Not necessarily as a stone fireplace maker, but I think that working on those great stone structures in those days would have been very exciting. (not as a menial stone-hauling labourer)
We’re into stone fireplaces and buildings of a slightly more modest scale! But essentially the stone masons’ craft has not changed. He may have access to better tools, and some welcome machinery and weight lifting aids. But in the end, the masons’ art is that of his eye. He ’sees’ the finished shape within a block of stone that is just that to another person.
That part of the craft has never changed, and is as relevant when producing one of our stone fireplaces as it is to the men who shaped the stone blocks of the strozzi palace.