Almalgamation

All of a sudden, it seems like everything has changed at Rookwood.  With the exception of the Catholic portion, the Trusts have all been disbanded and brought together into a single General Cemeteries Trust for Rookwood Necropolis.  What does this mean to heritage?  What will it mean to the employees?  What about the prospects for this wonderful place?
Hopefully, good things.  It will be great if all the employees from the different trusts are, well, working together.  Of course, to a degree, we already were.  Certainly at Monuments in Memoriam, we had a good and growing relationship with the Jewish Cemetery Trust and with the Independents and we had started doing some work in the old areas of the Muslim trust.
Interestingly, the amalgamation has been pushed by government for decades...  if not a century or more...  but all of a sudden its real and very immediate.  The idea has been supported by the National Trust Cemeteries Committee for a long time, although for my part I was skeptical as it seemed to me like the cemeteries in Rookwood were already too big (but maybe that's just me coming from a small town and a smaller cemetery), but I'm not sure that anyone envisioned that it would be completed without the endorsement of the different Trusts themselves.  It will certainly be a huge loss if community members feel less engaged and empowered:  as groups such as the Jewish Cemetery Trust have very committed individuals who provide an important contribution to the cemetery and strong linkages to the wider community.
The hope is that with a combined management over the whole site (well, over the whole site except the large Catholic component), it will be possible to build upon the different successes of the various trusts while also unifying operations and regulations and all of that sort of stuff.
I'm hopeful that it will also help us continue our progress towards greater care and maintenance for the historic monuments all over Rookwood.

I've made up a map showing what I think are the areas now included in the General Cemeteries Trust of Rookwood Necropolis...  the large missing chunks are
upper left:  Old Catholic
middle right:  War Graves
middle:  Rookwood Crematorium...   which has it's century old lease running out in 15 or 20 years...
lower portions:  Catholic
with the new development area at the furthest south being part of the amalgamated GCT, with burial space to be divided between Jewish and Muslim communities

I'll try and embed the map below, but if it doesn't appear in you browser, this link should work and open it in Google Maps:


http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=202792280362984896153.0004bf50e8b02536e2d07&msa=0

View General Cemeteries Trust of Rookwood Necropolis in a larger map

The Les Darcy Vault in Maitland IV: Restoration

It was a great feeling when the safety fence came down and the plastic and hessian (mortar aftercare) came off....  Stepping back, you could see that the project has really been a success.
Even though I do maintain that conservation should trump restoration, well, in this case, restoration rightly won out.

The Les Darcy gravesite before we started the stonework restoration.

With the historic kerbset gone – thrown out rather than maintained or repaired, probably in the 1970s – and a brutal (and failed) concrete monstrosity poured over the vault and graves, well, I think the Maitland City Council and the family and all of the interested parties and donors and, particularly, the guiding team of heritage experts and professionals:  they got it right...   and we were very happy to get to play our part.

Here's a black-and-white photo of what the vault looks like now

and here's the historic photo from the National Library of Australia

©National Library of Australia  http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3772881

We may not have raised much money for the Trusts at Rookwood, but we did get to help in a great project...  and one which proved team-building (at least that's what I'm telling myself about our overnight stays in the highway-side caravan park) and gave us a chance to do some real traditional stonemasonry.  All good!

By the way, if you happen to follow this blog, sorry for adding all of the various Les Darcy stories all at once.  I try not to be superstitious, but, somehow, I never want to post any of the stories about a job until it's all done.  Maybe not superstitious but just prudent...  or, maybe, just superstitious?

Wondabyne

Had a great hike on the weekend heading out from Wondabyne Station to Woy Woy (and then down to Ettalong beach for a swim).  I was quite excited to get a glimpse of the Wondabyne Quarry...  particularly as we've just been working with the sandstone on the Les Darcy grave restoration in Maitland.

With no access to the Wondabyne Quarry...  this is as close as you can get...

It turns out that the station at Wondabyne is awesome:  tiny and on the water– one carriage long only and you have to be in the last car and warn the guard in advance that you want the train to stop...  but you can hardly see the quarry at all.  The old Quarry manager's house (or what seems to be such...  as it is inside the fence) is great and then you can see some cranes and derricks and catch glimpses of the quarry faces.  It was one of those times when you're very happy to have a camera with a good zoom...  'cause even though I couldn't see much in real life...  the photos show things up quite wonderfully.

There is, however, a public wharf that you can sit on and cool your toes in the river...  and then a great hike up the hill and, some management trail sections aside, lots of interesting spots along a solidly good trek bringing you slowly around and then up Mount Wondabyne...  with a waterfall along the way

just watch out for the strange biting grubs in the water...

Here's to Wondabyne Sandstone!

a sneak peak at our carving for the Les Darcy gravesite restoration

The Les Darcy Vault in Maitland III: On the Chain Gang

You never know what you're going to end up doing at this job.  Today, it was picking out small grey pebbles from a rockpile of thousands of stones.  Tomorrow, well, it could hardly get crazier, could it?

When you're sorting pebbles, especially small pebbles of less than 10mm, you start to think all sorts of crazy thoughts.  I tried to focus only on how funny it was that, yes, here I am sorting pebbles.  Eventually though, I couldn't help but do some math...
1.5 tonnes of pebbles
1 cubic metre of pebbles
each handful including 15 pebbles
handfuls averaging 3 reject pebbles
handfuls weighing, say, 100g of pebbles
10 handfuls in a kilogram of pebbles
1000 kilograms in a tonne of pebbles...
10,000 handfuls of pebbles
150,000 pebbles
30,000 reject pebbles...
All those white pebbles at Bunnings, do you think that they are hand-sorted in China or India
Factories sorting pebbles?
What about the historic 'New Zealand pebbles' that monumental masons used to sell at Rookwood?
Are there beaches of perfect pebbles?
People paid to actually pick and bag pebbles....?
Well, it's rather boring...  pebbles this and pebbles that.

Matthew was away on holiday and Shannon was off with an injured ankle, so it fell to the apprentice Damian to anchor the sorting job...  but, oddly,  it was myself and Grahame who survived it best.  We had thought that a very simple job where you could chat on speakerphone all day or listen to music, well, wouldn't it be a perfect job for an apprentice?  Turns out, no.  It was us old-timers who could do it...  and it was like I was killing Damian whenever I tried to leave him there.  Maybe the pile was too big?  Maybe he did a version of the math too?  I think he would have rather that we pulled out some of his teeth.  So we did it...  although we eventually settled on sorting out a reasonable number only...  which ate away any profit we might have made...  but did give us an excellent result! 

Pebbles locked into the bottom of the concrete infill when the vault was 'fixed' in the 70s or 80s!

The good part, and why we ended up doing such a crazy job, is that we really did have an almost perfect match with the original historic pebbles.  Grant found a mass of them on the underside of the concrete render completed in the so-called restoration work done in the 1970s (?), so we knew exactly what had been there.  We searched locally in Maitland (where we had had wonderful success at Saddington's...  an awesome old-time outdoor, landscaping, hardware everything-it-should-be store) but couldn't source them...  then tried online...  and ended up driving around Sydney too.  We ended up finding a nearly perfect match...  just with slightly too much of the grey and rusty-yellow.  The original pebbles did have both, but in a slightly reduced proportion.  So it seemed that, having gotten so close, well, we should really go all the way and get things as exactly right as we could.

So, somehow, Grahame, Damian and I spent a good part of a day picking pebbles

out of a massive pile of pebbles.

Still more carving...

Sorry if this blog gets a bit boring...  but it seems like I keep coming back to carving...   (which is, perhaps, not surprising given that I seem to be spending so much time obsessively doing it!)

I finally finished the low relief waratah which I promised Libby's mom...  one day late (can you believe it...  I really only had 2 hours more to do on Christmas Day and, although Libby was very forgiving and gave me time to have a go at finishing the carving, well, it really wasn't realistic).  Anyway, the carving turned out much better than I had feared...  and was a wonderful introduction to actually doing bas-relief work. 

I've been lucky enough to have had good long days at both the British Museum and the Louvre...  and at both, it was the low relief work taken from ancient sites (especially Assyria) which most enthralled me.  So, after 20 years, I've finally had a go at it and, well, it's hard!  It took forever to do a small panel 200mm x 160mm with the carving only 1.5mm deep.  A crazy amount of time.  Maybe 40 hours?  Maybe more. 

Starting the waratah (and a bunch of cycladic figurines) in October...

progress in November...

I think I could do it in half the time, if I ever do it again...  and a quick sandstone one I've started has been so much faster (only 1 hour so far, and it seems half-done, though we'll see how long it takes to actually finish it)

I still need to decide what to do about the background...  maybe two directions of scutch marks?

Gordon Brown– a Rookwood Icon– Has Left Us

Very sad afternoon today at Rookwood as we heard the news that the wonderful Gordon Brown has left us. 

I can't speak for others, and I know that I can't do Gordon justice, but I've got to try.

I know that I was lucky to get as much of a chance to know him as I did, but I do wish that I had more.  He has had a tremendous and permanent effect on me.  Libby brought me to Australia, but it was Gordon who pulled me into the Rookwood fold.

Interestingly, it was only yesterday that Eric, of the Friends of Rookwood reminded me of my first trip to Rookwood, as he was with Gordon on a tour day and we ended up having a great and interesting conversation.  I'm a shy person, but there was something about Gordon that made a deep impression, and an almost instant connection...  a connection which slowly brought me around to Rookwood which seemed too big, too wild, too much, inhuman...  and yet, now, is an anchor in my life.  Gordon taught me so much about lettering and about lead-lettering...  and shared his knowledge to the point of exhaustion.  Grahame and Matthew and I will never be able to repay him, except maybe by continuing to improve...  and practice...  and help keep the skill going.  But I owe Gordon much more, and I know that he'll always be with me when I'm in Rookwood, and whenever I'm working and thinking about what I do.

Gordon Brown will be forever missed...  but also forever celebrated in the landscape of Rookwood–  in the lead lettering, in the care of the grounds, in everyone who is a friend of Rookwood.

Gordon Brown at 71 teaching us lead lettering. He was amazing.

Thank you Gordon.  Thank you so much.

The Les Darcy Vault in Maitland II: Matching the Historic Design

We've got our design!  In consultation with the team of experts that Maitland City Council has brought together for the Les Darcy grave restoration under Aaron Cook, we've agreed to specifications for the replacement kerbset which should be great. 

A historic photo from the National Library of Australia provides great evidence:

©National Library of Australia      http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3772881

As you can see (hopefully) the new kerbs should be a great match for the historic ones

After discussions and solid deliberation with the project team from Maitland City Council, I did a series of test versions using Google Sketchup. The 3D modelling allowed me to keep trying different options to find the best possible match... with shadows and the ability to change perspective, its very powerful... and, up to now, all my playing around with Sketchup was, well, playing around. All of a sudden I can do something specifically useful!?!

After discussions and solid deliberation with the project team from Maitland City Council, I did a series of test versions using Google Sketchup. The 3D modelling allowed me to keep trying different options to find the best possible match... with shadows and the ability to change perspective, its very powerful... and, up to now, all my playing around with Sketchup was, well, playing around. All of a sudden I can do something specifically useful!?!

The pillar design with joggle hole.

One thing I found most interesting was that the 'check' on the pillars is not formed by a square cutting or an architectural cavetto (quarter-round hollow) but is, instead, created by a shallow v-cut.  Even a very shallow angled cut produces strong shadown with dark and light contrasting bands which are visually arresting...  and yet requires very little stone removal.

Surveying Has Started

The State of Vaults & Grand Monuments project has started!  We're now at 10 of ~330 vaults...  and it looks like it's going to be great...  if a real challenge.

Volunteers from The Friends of Rookwood joined me on Sunday Oct 16th for the inaugural survey...  and we had a good time on a beautiful day.... 

Check out the project website if you're interested...  and, of course, there's lots of volunteer opportunities if you might want to get involved...  on site, online, or at a reference library...  we've got lots of interesting (and, to be fair, also lots of rather repetitive) stuff to do!

http://sites.google.com/site/rookwoodmonuments/

Survey Schedule:
the 3rd Sunday of every month, and,
the last Wednesday of every month...
{as long as the Bureau of Meteorology is not forecasting more than 10mm of rain for Sydney Olympic Park at 60%+ chance as of 9pm the night before}
see the website for more info...!

There wasn't this many watsonia where we were surveying on Oct 16th...  but they are in flower now throughout Rookwood...

The Les Darcy Vault in Maitland I

We're all quite excited and honoured to have been chosen to do the stonework restoration component of a large project by Maitland City Council and the local community.

It's going to be an interesting challenge for me– and for us as a team....  Personally, my firm philosophical commitment to Conservation means that I try to avoid Restoration work:  I'm almost always trying to retain and protect historic fabric...  not replicate it.  I may also struggle with working to other peoples specifications:  I am used to being in control of the work that I do...  and setting my own specifications...  with the flexibility to respond to unforeseen problems with the fabric.

As a team, the project will require long drives  overnight trips, and a larger workforce than we usually take for off-site work...  especially as the apprentices seem very keen to take part...  their parents & grandparents remembering Les Darcy!


The gravestone of the legendary boxer is a vault which has been suffering water problems and subsidence over the past decades...  and which had a massive and unsympathetic renovation in the 1960s where the beautiful historic kerbset was removed and replaced with a monstrous mass of concrete.  Our job will be to prepare and install standstone kerbing to match the lost historic design:  check out the Maitland City Council job specifications which includes a great history.

Volunteer Project

I'm not sure that I really know what I've gotten myself into...  but, somehow, there's a massive volunteer project growing at Rookwood and I've got lots of work to do!

The collapse of the HOARE vault was the impetus for the whole project.

We need to fully record such monuments as a precondition for effective

management...  and for applying for heritage grants!

Working with the Friends of Rookwood, with a wide range of volunteers, and including members of– and co-operation with– the Jewish Cemetery Trust, the Independent Cemetery Trust, the Anglican & General Cemetery Trusts...  and the National Trust Cemeteries Committee,  oh yes, and the Rookwood Necropolis Trust (alot of different capital-T Trusts!)...   well, it is a potentially great project to record the condition and design of many of the historic vaults and grand monuments in Rookwood.

Using the techniques of archaeological surveys, coupled with the incredible power of GIS (Geographic Information System), we are hoping to create a permanent working record of monuments which will serve as a resource for future conservation works.  By leveraging the experience and dedication of volunteers to complete the baseline studies, we will be able to document indepth conservation information which help both in managing these historic resources and in applying for targeted grants to help with actual physical conservation maintenance and repairs.

The survey forms are being designed in from my experience in conducting safety surveys and monument recordings over the past 20 years, in consultation with a range of cemetery conservation experts...  and attempting to be consistent with international standards for naming and identifying materials and deterioration.  The database and GIS are being constructed by Gary Luke of the Jewish Cemetery Trust.  The volunteers, well, it looks like the Friends of Rookwood might be taking over much of the actual work of the project...  I gave a presentation to them, and, well, it became clear that they are much better equipped and organised than I am...  and that, really, it will be my job to help with the training and monumental masonry/conservation side of things...  but, if anyone can actually see the work through, it's going to be them...   ...and any other volunteers who would like to join in!  If you're interested in more information, please have a look at the project website...  though please note that it is very much a work-in-progress.

We're hoping to do a few dry-runs in August and then actually start some recording days in September...

The project website is:  http://sites.google.com/site/rookwoodmonuments/
and the Friends of Rookwood are at: http://www.friendsofrookwoodinc.org.au/

We should be posting our training/workday schedule within the next few weeks...

Back to Canada

I'm heading to Canada for 3 weeks to look after my Dad–  and to try and peck away at the 575 monuments I have left on my To Do list at Woodlawn.

By the time we established an Annual Safety Survey in 1998, the on-going monument repair project had already seen 1500 gravestone repaired...  but they had been limited by the limitations in my skills and experience, and the reliance on government funded student labour (great, but not technically skilled or experienced... at least until the end of the summer).

With a focus on safety–  starting with the safety of the public but extending to staff and then to the safety of the historic monuments themselves–  we have completed over 5000 repairs at Woodlawn Cemetery...  all the while trying to ensure the long-term preservation of monuments through following best-practice conservation techniques to the greatest extent possible given the importance of ensuring long-term safety on the grounds.

This year, Kate Paterson should be able to help me again, if she's got her Ph.D mostly done, and I'm hoping to get a few of the remaining safety issues addressed....

If you're interested in cemetery conservation and gravestone repairs in a Canadian context, I have posted a good deal of material on the Historic Monument Care portion of the Woodlawn site over the years:  http://guelpharts.ca/woodlawncemetery/section.php?sid=40

PS:  There's also lots of photographs of Woodlawn in my monthly landscape photos on the Guelph Arts website available at:
http://guelpharts.ca/woodlawncemetery/photomedia-listing.php?gid=30

It's summer in Canada...  cherry & blueberry season!

Work in the Jewish Old Ground

Last year we took on a great project with the Jewish Cemetery Trust to complete a bunch of work in the Jewish Old Ground.  The Trust is working towards a goal of fully maintaining and caring for all the monuments in their cemetery...   and we are happy to be getting to opportunity to play a part in it all.

The project so far has been great, but two monuments have poised particular difficulties.  Jack Fisher, the Chairman of the Jewish Cemetery Trust, set us a real challenge by asking us to include two historic marble slabs which had been badly broken, possibly by repeated vandalism, many years ago.  I've done a bunch of monuments with complex breaks...  but had never done a marble slab in so many pieces (in Canada, it's only with limestone bases that I've had that many pieces)...  but I knew that it could be done (as the actual stone was still physically strong)...  and that my co-worker Grahame and I would love to do it.

I can't say that it was a great decision financially for MiM...  'cause it certainly took alot more that the 10 hours that we were each supposed to have for it...  but we did our best to minimise the actual costs to MiM and impacts by only working on the SIMMON and NATHAN stones when we had slow periods or rain-days.

We did most of the drilling in our mason's lodge...  which took a good deal of rainy-day time...  but even the reinstallation required patience as  we did it in stages.  It would have been easier to glue the pieces together on a board..  but that inevitably leads to excessive epoxy use..  uncleaned-up spills on the back...  and a lack of good stone-to-stone contact.  With a fragile multi-piece monument like this, it also risks real damage to the stone during the transport and reinstallation.

They are not yet unveiled, as the mortar is still curing, but they are up and all together and the gaps (which ended up being surprisingly few) are filled.  The marble in all reinstalled using conservation hidden-pin repairs where stone-to-stone contact is ensured by limiting the use of epoxy to the pin holes (with a few spot applications for the very smallest of the pieces).  This takes alot longer and alot more care and skill...  but is vital for the long-term health of the monument:  natural water movement through the stone is restored...  and the permeable lime mortar used to fill the joints acts sacrificially as a site of evaporation and soluble salt concentration which concentrates weathering and pollutant damage into the replaceable mortar instead of the historic fabric.

The NATHAN stone during reinstallation work...

Grahame (with Matthew helping) installing pieces of the SIMMON monument.

Sneak peek of the SIMMON stone as Grahame was doing the mortaring work...

Sunken Graves after 100 Years

I'm just back from a fantastic holiday in Broken Hill, Burra, and Adelaide.  Amazing industrial heritage...  fascinating places...  big skies...  Libby and I had a great trip.  I don't think that I got a real understanding of the outback, however, because of all the rain they've been having in the last year....

One fascinating effect, however, has been the crazy appearance of historic cemeteries in Broken Hill, Burra, and the surrounding area.  I dragged Libby to cemeteries all over...  mostly to see the types of monuments and the longevity of various stones (and particularly of Mintaro slate...  but that's another story)...  and everywhere it was the same.  Deep sharp-sided coffin-shaped sunken graves all over.  What's amazing is that these are historic graves...  1870s...  1920s...  right up to recent ones...  they are collapsed all over.  The council workers or cemetery staff at Broken Hill had a mountain of blue metal and were clearly trying to make the place safe...  but it was bizarre.

The coffin shape, which is very foreign to North American eyes (havng been switched for rectangular caskets 50 or 100 years ago), can be clearly seen.

Above: a newly sunken grave beside the oldest monument at Broken Hill cemetery!

Lead Lettering

Matthew, Grahame & I are all continuing our slow progress in mastering the old art of lead lettering.  Gordon Brown, our wonderful teacher and a living icon at Rookwood, is not as active and well as we'd all wish him to be, but we are endeavouring to work our way up to filling at least a good part of his footsteps...

Here's some photos of the stages in a practice job I've been doing for some friends...  the final plaque is to be installed in the space of two bricks.  Here I'm pencilling in the letters...  using a great art deco font based on the one at the Lawrence Hargrave house in Point Piper.

The next step is completing v-cut lettering.  Grahame and Matthew have been mentoring me in it...  and I'm happy to report that I'm coming along.  Still very slow...  and with a long way to go, but becoming precise...  and starting to get a result which I'm at least half happy with....

Here's the panel in progress...  laid out along with my tungsten-carbide lettering chisels and lightest mallet.

The v-cut letters ready for leading.

The lead lettering is a slow progress...  at least for us so far:  where Gordon Brown said a good tradesman was expected to complete 60 letters a day (layout, cut, lead, clean)...  I think I'm up to maybe 6...  Matthew may be at about 8...  and Grahame's not saying...  but, we're definitely not up to the old standards yet!

Here's the letters ready for the final tapping-in and shaping...

I'll do some more posts on the techniques...  or maybe I'll try and get Gordon to do a guest entry (as he's written up quite alot of reference material on the old lettering techniques)...  but essentially it involves drilling angled holes into the letters, cutting lead into thin strips, shaping the letter roughly in lead, pounding the lead in with an ebonite mallet (also called vulcanite it is a hardened rubber product which is just softer than marble...  allowing you to pound in the lead without leaving impact marks on the stone), cutting back the excess, pounding the lead in again, cutting back the excess and starting to form the letter, tapping- in the lead again, cutting the letter forms, giving a flat-face final tapping-in, cutting the final form, and then cleaning and finishing.

I'll post some photos of the final plaque after its installed...

Here's a photo of a finished shadow lettering plaque I did for this year's HIDDEN Art Show at Rookwood...

Still a carving addict...

Sorry that I've not been very active in my blogging...  I'm afraid that I've become even more of a carving addict than ever!

I've got some very interesting (at least to me!) work on the go...  most based on neolithic and iron-age Cycladic marble designs...  but interrupted with a secret-santa gift of a small sandstone monument with raised lettering (my first)...  and I'm still struggling to complete the intricate Celtic knotwork that I started last Christmas.

PS:  I've got some draft blog entries that I wrote while off-line on the train commute...  and will try and post them...  and back-date them to the actual time that they were written.  Sorry if things end up out of order!  (Maybe this new year I'll be good and more regular in posting...  though I am very tempted to go out to the backyard right now and work on my current footed bowl...!)

Jewish Old Ground

We've been given a fantastic opportunity to complete a significant project for the Jewish Cemetery Trust...  including a wide range of maintenance and repair jobs.  At the moment, we are concentrating on completing the maintenance work as we await our approval of our application for a Standard Exemption from the Heritage Branch.

We are following stringent specifications for good practice maintenance and repair work...  using training lime mortars, poulticing, and a variety of conservation techniques emerging from the National Trust (NSW) Guidelines for Cemetery Conservation, ongoing discussions with the Heritage Branch, as well as technical expertise and training from Scotland, Denmark, Canada, etc...  as well as guidance from the Burra Charter and ICOMOS (the International Council of Monuments and Sites).

The project is a great one...  and should integrate well with the Jewish Cemetery Trust's plans for comprehensive repair works...  possibly as well as a National Trust appeal on behalf of the trust for tax-deductable donations to fund the conservation work.

Best of all, it's an opportunity to jump-start the sharing of experience & specifications that I've been meaning to try to get online and out for comment.  The commitment of the Jewish Cemetery Trust, including the Chairman Jack Fisher, the trustee most dedicated to the Old Ground and heritage issues Gary Luke, and the actual staff on the grounds (is going to help drive the project...  I've promised to do a good job of reporting to them...  which should mean that I'll be able to do a good job of sharing our progress and starting a discussion with all of you).