The Stonemason

A friend of mine in Portugal, whom I shall not now get to visit, showed me some photographs of quarrying in his area. This prompted me to look at some photographs I took at a "Marble and Granite" stonemasons in Colmenar de Oreja. This is one of the seven cities which, along with the capital, make up Madrid. I was trying to enter items on my blogs in date order but time and tide as we say in England; so I thought that I would include this on my new web page.

After I arrived in Madrid at the, almost, end of my epic train journey in July 2017, I went to stay with my friends from Tenerife who also have a house in Los Arroyos, El Escorial. I had visited this location before when I was staying in Tenerife and have lots of adventures to relate eventually. To the point, José Luis was born in Colmenar and was in the process of updating a house there. I travelled through with him on several occasions giving me an opportunity to reacquaint myself with this wonderful and historic place, oh and dislocate my shoulder too.

Whilst there we paid a couple of visits to Román Gonzáles, Marble and Granite Stonemasons. Like many of the businesses in the area this has been handed down through the family and the family run the business. Marble and Granite are hugely popular in both Spain and Portugal and other Mediterranean countries too. I happen to know that the Romans loved the stuff.  It is not only used in monuments and buildings but household and garden ware, bathrooms and floors. If the weight of your apartment can take it there is no limit to what can be achieved, you only need implicit trust in your architect!

Whilst wandering around José Luis took a lot more photographs of the textures of the stone but it was the similarities to woodworking, both in methods and machinery, which held my attention. The cutting machinery and the polishing closely resemble the cutting and finishing of a fine piece of wood. The proviso is that everything is on a much larger scale and I would not like to drop a piece of rock on my finger or toe. Attention is also paid to grain and texture and how this will affect the finished piece.

The huge blocks of granite arrive on the back of a low loader, perhaps transferred from a train. Transferred to a precision controlled bogey a device like a huge "cheese cutter" slices off sheets of rock to the required thickness. From here they are transferred by huge "grabs" to the roller beds where the slab will be sized according to the task in hand. Of course not every slab is huge, I saw comparatively wafer thin marble being transformed into a vanity stand for a washbasin. There are a myriad of electric or compressed air powered tools in the workshops, just as in woodwork pillars and urns can be turned on a lathe. Intricate shapes constructed by hand tools require a huge amount of physical strength and skill and concentration. Just as in a carpenter's shop nothing is wasted as the various stacks of oddments attest. A use will be found somewhere. The only difference being the scale.

When constructing a piece of furniture the wood is "sanded" down using various grades of glass-paper until a smooth, flawless finish is obtained ready for polishing. So too when working with marble and granite, the contrast being the size and power of the tools in question. No sheets of glass-paper here. Rotating disks are required. A skilled mason sets up the bed and controls the machine. Water is used as a coolant and lubricant too. An eye for the task tells the operator when to replace the rotating heads and which grade to use. This is a very valuable piece of rock!

I hope you find this interesting, I like to find the out of ordinary things which make up our world along side the palaces and pictures already made famous.  The album "Stonemason"  has some more photos, you will note that they are all in monochrome (B&W). I thought that this was more evocative of the visit (and in keeping with "Mono Monday" Steve)