Month: August 2024

The passing of Simon Verity at Carmarthenshire, Wales, the man responsible for the 31 figures at the Portal of Paradise at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in the city of New York, causes us to reflect on the creativity and the passion for stone of this British sculptor.

The best stonecutters come from uncomplicated rural stock. A stone is as much part of the life of the earth as farming. Geometry, the measure of the earth, is the core of their work. Squaring a block, making it true, each step measured and with no shortcuts gives a logic to the turn of the mind. It is no surprise to me that Socrates was a stonecutter, because they’re a breed apart, independent and truculent.

– Simon Verity

The son of architect and artist parents, after schooling he apprenticed for six years to his great uncle Oliver Hill, an architect, landscape architect and garden designer. Simon also studied with conservationists at Wells Cathedral. Eric Gill the English sculptor, letter cutter and typeface designer heavily influenced his work. Simon became an expert stone carver and a superb self taught letter cutter. His love of Medieval grottoes came from restoration work he conducted in the mid 80’s and he constructed multiple new grottoes for clients. His sculptural carvings on English cathedrals and churches were extensive.

The Cathedral Competition

In the late 1980’s, Dean James Morton created a limited international competition to find a sculptor to organize a team of carvers to create and install the figures for the “Preachers’ Portal” on the porch of the southwest tower. The task involved carving the eight figures in a workshop, then setting up the sculptures in the empty spaces on the porch. The tower is known as St. Paul’s Tower. It was under construction and the focus of the Stoneyard Institute. Sir Hugh Casson of the Royal Academy produced a short list of sculptors including Simon Verity. In April of 1988 Simon visited the site.

To everyone’s surprise, Simon told the Dean that he would instead carve the figures at the central portal. This made the project immensely more visible. Stones had been set at the portal in the late 1930’s according to Ralph Adams Cram’s 1925 design for the west front. There were a total of 12 stones, including pedestals for the major rank of figures and 12 stones for the upper rank. These stones would have to be carved in situ. The designated figures from the Old and New Testament were specified in the original 1925 plan. According to Dean Morton “it was all male and unimaginative” so he assembled a group of religious theologians, including a rabbi, to come up with the appropriate list. For the 24 stones that existed, the list contained 31 names. Verity would need to carve two figures out of seven of the stones.

The Cathedral’s Own Carvers Added

Verity was joined on the project by six carvers from the Cathedral’s Stoneyard Institute. They were: Jessica Aujero Lowrie, Amy Brier, Gabriele Hitl-Cohen, D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon, Joseph Kincannon and Dennis Reed. These carvers worked primarily on the ornate pedestals.

These bases complement the figure’s story or explain their teaching. Simon considered Dennis Reed’s “visitation” pedestal the best of them. He wrote “Alan Bird who I had known in Wells introduced me to the carvers. I was impressed and awed by their stories. We started on the bases, or socles, to the large statures. The young carvers were to do drawings to relate to the prophets above, to be interesting and to respect the architecture. Some of those little carvings truly reflect the passion of the carvers and through them to passers by.”

With Love and Respect

Several people on that project and others with the Cathedral have reflected on the time when Simon was carving and its lasting impact:

“Simon was a free-thinking and innovative man. Working on the West Front, Simon encouraged us to create our own imagery by exploring the stories of biblical figures to be carved. He fostered a space that allowed for our interpretations and comparisons, biblical times and current states of affairs to be expressed by directly carving into the large blocks of stone.”

Gabriele Hitl-Cohen – Stone Carver on the Portal of Paradise

“When Simon started the eight-foot major figure of Elijah – the first one he carved – I spent time with him on the rickety scaffold he set up. I was totally in awe of his carving, relentlessly chipping away and shaping the block. I felt that he was a modern-day Michelangelo. He barely stopped hammering away at the stone – he could see what was in  the block and how he wanted that figure to emerge.”

Robert F. Rodriguez – Photojournalist who documented the stone work on the Cathedral for more than decade.

“I first came to visit my father in New York back in 1989 when I was 13; I would return each year and watch it progress as well as the team he’d built to work on it. The thing I loved the most were the elements of his life that he immortalised in stone. He had local people and friends pose for the carvings, such as one of the three foot figures Esther, 3rd from the right at the top standing with a dog modelled by Jessica his great friend’s niece. Her dog was called Cooper so it sits with a camera around its neck as a nod to another friend of his, Martha Cooper, who has lead an amazing life photographing graffiti in the city since the 70’s. 

One piece that particularly amused the young me was the addition of a person I’ll spare the name of that made his life difficult at the time who will spend eternity kissing his butt. It’s only small so I’ll leave discovering this up to the more dedicated. This is an example of his sense of humour.

This was a project that took thirteen years start to finish; his opinions of it changed from the start of the job to the end but he managed to keep a consistency to the composition of the entire piece.“

Johno Verity, Simon Verity’s son

“I’m still not sure if a firm decision was ever made as to who would lead the Portal project but somehow scaffolding was beginning to be erected. As we watched and waited and continued on our regular carving work, Simon kept busy. He was constantly drawing. He would sit anywhere, even on the ground, doing preliminary sketches. I hope a book comes out of his sketches.
On the northern steps, by the portal, we sat with smaller pieces of limestone, maybe a foot, eighteen inches. He guided us to draw a draped figure. He taught us how to think of drapery and how it falls naturally. Since the portal figures are larger than life, drapery would be very important.

Simon also had us use slate or limestone and taught us one of his specialties, lettering. He explained to me how to hold my flat chisel to create the perfect serif. Aha! That’s actually where serifs came from – carvings of the ancient world – Greeks, Romans.
He showed us photos and spoke wistfully of his gilded lettering at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was so in love at the time that the letters literally burst into flames, so the letters grew flourishes of flames. Do you know how risky that was as an artist, carving directly on the wall of a major institution. But it came out stunning and so unique.“

Jessica Aujero Lowrie – Stone Carver on the Portal of Paradise

“The weather was cool, and we stood before the central portal staring at the looming statue blocks. This was a big moment as Simon was about to embark on the biggest carving project of his career. I’m not sure of the sanctioned starting date, but that was of little concern to him. He was more determined to learn about the quality of the twelve limestone blocks that rested on their pedestals, undisturbed, for all of sixty years. His head was already in the stone.
As we stood there it was obvious that he was ready to swing into action which prompted me to ask if it might be a good idea to set up scaffolding before starting any work. The suggestion fell on deaf ears. Undeterred, he led me to the maintenance department where we shouldered two ladders back to the front portal. Without hesitation, he plunked one against a statue block. With hammer and punch in hand, he scrambled up and without ceremony, started whaling on the stone. The chips rained down, and so I joined in. Incidentally, there was about half an inch of hard crust on the surface, but underneath, the stone was as pure and clean as the day it was quarried.
It may have seemed a little hasty to start carving on such a prestigious landmark in such a way, but Simon was well aware that many layers of stone would fall before anything resembling statues could emerge. The work was heavy-handed, but we were literally scratching the surface.

Our first step was to punch large rectangular blocks into cylinders.
To many, “roughing out” the stone might be considered mindless grunt work, but Simon embraced this stage of the carving. The canvas of bumps, pits and shattered peaks served up a range of images that might later become part of the finished sculpture. The stone fed the imagination. Simon said this was when he did his best thinking.
I think it fair to say that Simon was a bit of a purist. I can’t recall him ever using a pneumatic, nor any power tools for that matter. In fact, even his chisels were pretty pitiful. You could have put a railroad spike in his hand, and he would have made it work. In those early days, we were both pretty scruffy and must have looked like vandals to a growing number of concerned onlookers. Eventually, many worthy carvers would join forces with Simon on this project. I can’t help but smile when thinking that this is how the Portal of Paradise project all began.“

Another Simon Memory…

“When I started the miniature city statue base under the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah on the west front, I was more than a little apprehensive. Aside from a few practice pieces, this would be my first direct carving on a real job, meaning to let images from the rough stone evolve the overall composition and without the aid of drawings or models.

Simon, in his usual composed manner, suggested that I use the crystal forms reminiscent of a grotto project we had recently worked on in Texas. He was adamant that the carving be faithful to the subject matter. The carving had to represent the destruction and rebuilding of Jerusalem in support of the statue narrative above. That was the extent of his direction.

I wanted more instruction, but he was eager that it be my own interpretation. He insisted that the carving would have more meaning, and be more impactful, if I shunned the practice of taking measurements off of a drawing. He cautioned me to avoid becoming more of a technician than a carver. This was a pretty abstract notion for a carver who had only apprenticed in a structured environment.

When not carving, Simon spent a great amount of time drawing, and making small maquettes, or studies. To my recollection, they never made their way onto the scaffold. He seemed to prefer facing the stone head on without any clutter. In this way, he shined a light on a whole new pathway to carving stone that I still make use of to this day.“

Joseph Kincannon – Stone Carver on the Portal of Paradise

Jean-Claude Marchionni, a talented French carver, joined Simon in 1993. Jean-Claude’s rigorous training had been as a member of the Compagnons Du Devoir and he and Simon became a great team. Different than previous sculptural carvers in the Cathedral’s history, Verity and Marchionni employed direct carving. There were no plaster models, no pointing or enlarging machines.

“Simon Verity and his collaborators created one of the most powerful works of religious art in recent times – the Portal of Paradise on the west front of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I had the privilege of observing its thirty-one figures gradually emerge from blocks of raw limestone over a span of twelve years (1985-1997). Now, as a cathedral docent, I introduce visitors to its iconography and symbolism.

The Portal is the most prominent and probably most frequently photographed work of art at the cathedral. It is also the most misunderstood. Many visitors lack the once-widespread familiarity with the Bible that would enable them to recognize such important Biblical characters as John the Baptist, Moses, David, and Abraham and Sarah. They also lack familiarity with the custom – common since the Renaissance – of transporting to modern times Biblical events such as social unrest in ancient Israel and the destruction of Jerusalem.  

A common misunderstanding, frequently repeated in social media, is that the Portal depicts scenes from the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, when in fact nearly all the imagery derives from the Old Testament. Misunderstanding and mystification have led some commentators to fantasize that something sinister lies behind images like the partially veiled face of Moses (from Exodus 34:33) or the skulls beneath the figure of Ezekiel (the Vision of Dry Bones, Ezekiel 37:1-14).

I have the privilege of helping visitors to see the Portal in the light in which its creators intended it to be seen and to appreciate the extraordinary richness of its Biblical imagery. After thirty years of observation, hardly a year goes by when I do not spot a detail that I never noticed before. 

Simon Verity’s legacy at the Cathedral will endure for as many centuries as the Cathedral stands. Stone is eternal, and Simon, who knew a bit of Latin, could easily appropriate for himself this line from Horace:

Exegi monumentum aere perennius (‘I have completed a monument more lasting than bronze’).”

-Thomas Fedorek – The Cathedral’s Senior Guide

Not Separate Statues

Simon did not see this project as in any sense isolated from the other elements of the Cathedral. He consulted with master geometer Michael Schneider to resolve connections between the images to be carved and the architecture. Line and shadow, how they would read from across the street and integrate into the West Front’s architecture were all worked out. Schneider tells us “he (Simon) organized the individual sculptures harmoniously with each other and with the building and space before it. Hardly anyone knows that Simon made the eyes of the line of sculpted personages each follow the visitor up the stairs in their sequence. Each looking at a key point in the geometry then passing us to the next set of eyes, watching us enter each step from the street up to the central front door.”

Now I trudge through the derelict streets of Harlem to the Cathedral, my tools over my shoulder. It’s a medieval horizon on the hill, massive, somber, squat with its unfinished towers. Here is my doorway facing west, my work laid out before me with the imperfections, the experiments, the hope, the possibilities. There is now no man alive who has the same experience I have, has worked this particular way. I am tracing painfully, intuitively, the same wellspring that gave life to a medieval maker of images.

– Simon Verity

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• Special thanks to Robert F. Rodriguez for organizing all of the photos from his own collection, that of Martha Cooper and Mary Bloom and for reaching out to the carvers.
• The New York Times Magazine, The Gospel According to Verity, July 9, 1989, Bruce Weber
• With Companions for the Journey, James Parks Morton, An Annotated Memoir
• The Portal of Paradise, Steve Zeitlin, citylore.org
• Correspondence between Mark Saxe and Simon Verity
• Divine Inspiration, Perspectives (magazine, UK), November 1994,
• Simon Verity writings courtesy of Martha Cooper
• Link to The Portal Project at Saint John the Divine. Martha Cooper’s Photo-Documentary of the last three years of the carving project.
• Constructing The Universe, Michael Schneider
• Link to: Tom Fedorek’s Guide to the Portal of Paradise