Category: Divine Stone

A TEAM EFFORT TO SET THE STRING COURSE

A cornice stone weighing several hundred pounds is carefully lowered into place by several members of the construction crew onto a bed of mortar on the south side of St. Paul’s tower. 

But, before that block for the string course was set, many steps and many people were involved in this finished piece.

A September 1988 edition of Cathedral describes the process. Editor Jane Churchman writes:

“Today (José Tapia, James Jamerson), Pedro Colon, Angel Escobar, Eddie Pizarro, Carol Hazel, Theresa Robb, Yves Pierre, Alan Knight and Tony Quinto cut stones. Precisely. As Theresa warned, ‘You can’t be more than 1/16′ off.”

Jessica Aujero (Lowrie) carves a medieval forest spirit into a cornice. D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon fleshes out a classical leaf on a finial; Amy Brier details a caryatid; Dennis Reed sculpts an American buffalo on one of four pinnacle faces.

Talmadge Fowler and Gerry Perez wait as Harold Dorman drives stones to Wesley Rose, elevator operator, for the ascent to Stephen Boyle, construction supervisor, and setters Joe Chifriller, Edgar Reyes and Raymond Duggan.

Most important to Alan Bird, instructional mason, is the value of each stone. Its permanence. Each stone is different and each stone tells the story of the people who cut and carved it.”

Stepping back even further, each of the thousands of limestone blocks required for the tower has a unique number, which designates its position.

Following the original design by Ralph Adams Cram, Master Builder James Bambridge studies  the blueprints to cut zinc templates and create job tickets so the apprentice stone carvers can accurately cut their stone.

Soon, a raw block with its corresponding job ticket lands on the banker of an apprentice stone cutter. When completed, the block is stored in the yard until a stone carver adds a uniquely designed carving to the block.

The block moves again, into the carving shed, and then back outside when carved.

Eventually it is moved to the south side of the Cathedral close for staging on the ground and, finally, it is hoisted into the lift to the tower summit for setting.

A team effort to set each stone.

The best place to view the string course carvings on the south façade is from the Peace Fountain on the Cathedral grounds. 

One can sit on the stone benches surrounding the fountain while, perhaps, enjoying a coffee and croissant from the nearby Hungarian Pastry Shop. Years ago, many of the Stoneyard Institute crew would get their morning coffee from this neighborhood landmark.

The two-sided corner cornice stones on both sides of the south façade reveal some imaginative carvings.

Nicholas Fairplay’s carving on the SW shows a foliage creature with upturned and swirling leaves surrounding a face with an open mouth.

On the SE side Joseph Kincannon created a regal, well-coifed individual with gorgeous curly hair and a mustache that resembles a King on a deck of playing cards.

The centerpiece on this string course, also by Joseph, reveals a snarling square-faced demon with wide eyes, sharp teeth, yet dainty paws and ears.

Angel Escobar’s two carvings both show fantastic beasts, something Newt Scamander from the Harry Potter films might be searching for.

One of Angel’s works shows a beast with glaring eyes and a broad mustache practically drooping onto the stone below. The other carving resembles a feline animal with curls sweeping away from its face and high arched eyebrows.

One of the more interesting carvings on the south side came from a visiting French artist, Jerome Lantheume. It relates the story of Jonah and the Whale.

According to the Scriptures, Jonah was thrown overboard and was swallowed by a giant fish – not to eat him, but to save him from drowning. Jonah lived inside the great fish for three days until God took mercy on him, with the fish expelling Jonah onto the shores of Ninevah.

Jerome was one of the first carvers to come to the Cathedral in an exchange program with Les Compagnons du Devoir, the “Companions of Duty.” It is a French organization of craftsmen and artisans dating from the Middle Ages.

Carvings across the south façade string course, left to right:

• SW corner, open-mouthed grotesque by Nicholas Fairplay
• Lamb of God (Agnus Dei), carver unknown
• Foliage
• Wide-faced grotesque by Nicholas Fairplay
• Funny medieval peasant character by Ruben Gibson
• Foliage
• Wide-eyed demon by Joseph Kincannon
• Fierce creature with droopy mustache by Angel Escobar
• Foliage
• Feline figure by Angel Escobar
• Foliage
• Jonah and whale by Jerome Lantheume
• SE corner, curly haired King by Joseph Kincannon

■

• Unless otherwise noted, all images are those of Robert F. Rodriguez, photojournalist and artist-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

(This is the first in a four part series on the String Course. These stones were prepared by the Sawyer, the Planer and the Cutter before being handed off to the Carver. The co-author of Divine Stone, Robert F. Rodriguez will take us around St. Paul’s Tower viewing these unique carvings. – RM)

From street level, it is extremely difficult to see the decorative band of carvings that comprise the string course on St. Paul’s tower at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This is especially true on the north side where a bundle of internet wires hangs off that side of the tower and the cathedral’s roof partially obstructs the array of humorous grotesque carvings, forest creatures and other intricately carved blocks of limestone. The north facade also lacks the architectural and decorative details such as columns, capitols and quatrefoils that the other sides have.


Work on the string course, the first level of the “C” zone of St. Paul’s tower, began in the summer of 1988. Master Mason Stephen Boyle, the tower’s construction foreman, had a large group of assistants to set the blocks. Besides the regular Stoneyard crew, he was joined by students from the Cathedral’s Summer Architectural program.

When the course of stones was all set, this horizontal line of carvings represented the most comprehensive look at the carvers’ skills and creativity. About two years prior, they designed and carved some 50 figures for the string course, sometimes referred to as the cornice course.

Master Carver Nicholas Fairplay explains the process: “I had the carvings on the string course alternate — every third boss carving is foliage and in between a face boss carving and then a figure or animal boss carving. I did this to train the students (apprentice stone cutters) to be more versatile as carvers. The students had only masonry skills, none of them had done any carving so I needed to find a way to train them quickly.”

Nicholas adds, “When a carving was completed, it had to be taken off the bench and stacked outside and a new stone brought in and placed on their bench. Some of the stones were quite large and there had to be no chips or damage in moving them.”

The finished stones’ temporary location on the ground provided a fleeting closeup look at the variety of carvings where one could count every gnarly tooth on a smiling demon, see the graceful flowing beards of mythological beasts and admire the deeply textured flowers and petals on many foliage carvings.

On each tower face, there are 11 carved blocks in a row, nestled between the tower buttresses on each corner. From there, a double-sided cornice stone wraps around the corner so that a total of 13 carvings face each side of the tower.

While it is almost impossible to identify each carver for all of the foliage blocks, most of the uniquely designed carvings can be matched to an individual carver. On the north face Nicholas Fairplay is responsible for four of the carvings, with two each done by D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon and Ruben Gibson and one each by Amy Brier and Gabriele Hitl-Cohen.

In Gothic cathedral architecture, forest creatures were a common theme, with nymphs and other arboreal characters often seen lurking among foliage. Nicholas Fairplay created a forest creature with a broad nose surrounded by a border of leaves, its face blending into the leaves. Another of Nicholas’ grotesques depicts a wide-eyed demon with the face of a lion and an elegant beard.

Nicholas’ most unusual carving for the north face was the head of John the Baptist on a platter, which sits in the middle of the carved gallery.  According to Bible passages, Salome danced before King Herod on his birthday. Her dancing so pleased Herod that in his drunkenness he promised to give her anything she desired, up to half of his kingdom. Salome asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Although Herod was appalled by the request, he reluctantly agreed and had John executed by beheading. 

While most of the limestone blocks for the cornice stones were about three-feet wide and weighed over 800 lbs., the stone for the John the Baptist block is extremely narrow, giving the carver a tight space to work on. This stone is a centerpiece, whose positioning allows all the carvings to be evenly spaced on the tower, according to Stephen Boyle.

For his two carvings, D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon produced a snarly-toothed lion with a gorgeous flowing mane, mustache and puffy cheeks, and a shy dragon, possibly napping, with its head tucked next to its wing. “Jeep” worked with either a clay model or a number of refined sketches as his templates while he carved these pieces.

In many of his works, Ruben Gibson liked to carve demons and other eerie grotesques. On a corner cornice block, Ruben created a wavy-haired grotesque with a downturned mouth, and on another block he created a flabby cheeked demon with a narrow mouth and a high crest above its eyebrows. 

Faces of female figures appear in two of the carvings on the north side by Amy Brier and Gabriele Hitl-Cohen. 

Gabriele remembers that with this block she learned how to carve the flowing and wavy lines of the figure’s hair emerging from underneath a delicately carved veil to give the work a Gothic look. 

Amy Brier notes “I was interested in adding a female to the string course, making a mark for gender equality perhaps, but I probably didn’t think it all the way through at that young age.” Recalling her carving over 30 years later, she remarks, “I look back and am unhappy with what I see as a terrible job! I am a lot better now!” 

Amy has come a long way since she left the Cathedral program and has continued working in stone. Besides teaching at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, IN, Amy has numerous public carvings in Bloomington, IN, Layfayette IN, and Hamilton OH. She is especially proud of  her work on the new Fall Creek Pavilion and the Indiana State Fair. 

Carvings across the north façade string course, left to right:

• NE corner, wavy-haired grotesque with downturned mouth by Ruben Gibson
• High-browed grotesque by Ruben Gibson
• Snarly Lion by D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon
• Woman’s faces by Amy Brier
• Forest creature by Nicholas Fairplay
• Foliage
• Head of St. John the Baptist on a platter by Nicholas Fairplay
• Foliage
• Foliage
• Woman wearing a veil by Gabriele Hitl-Cohen
• Shy dragon by D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon
• Green Man grotesque by Nicholas Fairplay
• NW Corner, foliage by Nicholas Fairplay

■

• All images in this post are by Photojournalist Robert F. Rodriguez

Word has reached us regarding the passing of stone carver and sculptor Kazutaka Uchida. We wish to offer condolences to his family, students and his many friends in the stone carving community. He was very proud of his many summers spent in the United States in the Pacific Northwest; Marble, Colorado, and Northern New Mexico teaching and working on his own carvings.

He was born and lived in Japan where he first studied sculpture. He received an advanced degree in sculpture from the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1975. He returned to Japan and was commissioned to researched artisan traditions for the Japanese government. His experiences in Nepal greatly affected his art and his life.

Uchida found resonance in clear lines, subtle beauty, harmonious relationships, and the quiet power of elemental forms to evoke the transcendence and a feeling of Zen-like monastic tranquility and peace. The museum director Stephen C. McCough describes Uchida’s sculpture…”It is an art of large and simple gestures which lead the eye through and around the piece and then into the surrounding space. His forms are elegant and refined. They consist primarily of the sphere, the plane, the disk, the straight line and the rectangle.”

Sculptors carve and polish stones, not to make beautiful stones; rather, the forms they make are the result of their search for the limits of their artistic capabilities.

– Kazutaka Uchida

■

One of the largest and most important stone contractors in the country, John Peirce became known as the “Granite King”. The firm supplied the material and constructed the foundation piers and superstructure of this phase of the Cathedral. 

Born in Frankfort, Maine, Peirce had studied law at Harvard but chose to return to Maine in 1873 to take over his father’s granite business at Mount Waldo. His father had several important granite quarries as well as a general contracting and building business.  He took to the industry quickly and began to grow the enterprise. Through investment, directorships and ownership he acquired additional granite properties to the extent that he largely controlled the output of the stone in the state.  He gained interests in the Hallowell Granite Works and the Boswell Granite Company. Among these was the Boswell Granite Fox Island Company. Included were Vinalhaven’s vast granite resources. By the 1900’s there were over 46 small quarries on Vinalhaven. The Vinalhaven Warff Quarry was the source of the monumental columns at the Cathedral.

From Maine to New York

Peirce moved to New York City in the late 1880’s to oversee the operation of his New York and Maine Granite Paving Block Company.  One of the company’s contracts paved Fifth Avenue from 8th Street to 90th Street with granite blocks.

He also realized that New York was the building center of the country and granite had become the symbol of strength and solidity. By the 1890’s he began to furnish building materials and erect many buildings in the city. Grand Central Terminal, the 42nd street New York Public Library and New York City’s first subway system among them. Peirce’s firm soon grew to be one of the largest granite contractors in the country.

By 1915 concrete, steel and asphalt replaced much of the demand for stone building products. Sleek modernity, rising costs of construction, modern paving methods and the decline of the stone carvers art were killing the granite industry. The advent of railroads especially the vastly superior networks in the midwest and the development of the limestone industry added to the decline. The “Granite King’s ” John Peirce Company ceased to exist.

■

• New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
• Prominent and Progressive Americans; an encyclopedia of contemporaneous biography, Harrison, Michael Charles, 1902, Vol. 2
• New York Public Library Digital Collections

(This is an encore post following Robert F. Rodriguez’ article on the Kincannon brothers. – The original post appeared December 22, 2021 and was written by Joseph Kincannon.-RM)

Jeep, or rather D’Ellis Kincannon, started his apprenticeship in the stoneyard in 1980 after working in the Cathedral mail room for a year. He came to NYC to go to art school, but found it wasn’t for him. When the stone yard program started up it seemed a perfect fit, and it was.

He excelled as a banker mason. I think it’s fair to say that he and Jose (Tapia) were the top stone cutters. The Cathedral showcased their work for fundraising purposes. They were featured in multiple magazines and news publications.

The Banker Mason

Jeep was also one of the first few to apprentice under Chris Hannaway. He had the highest regard for Chris and was disappointed to see him return to England. He often made reference to Chris’ mastery in banker masonry and anything stone related. Jeep’s prize possession was an old mallet that Chris had given him from his early days in Liverpool.

Master Builder James Bambridge was impressed enough with D’Ellis’ work to once state that “his masonry is as perfect as if it had been poured into a mold.” It was obvious that this discipline was one that Jeep immediately embraced. He also had a gift for drafting and setting out. He was a natural at perceiving 3-dimensional intersections.

To advance Jeep’s skills even further, the Cathedral sent him to the Bath School for Architectural Trades in England. This was very rewarding for Jeep as he completely immersed himself in the trade. Aside from the school, he was taken aback at finding himself in a city that the Romans had built in part. He was also astounded that one of the local pubs had been in operation since the “Black Death.” This place became a regular haunt for Jeep and many of the other students.

After a year, Jeep returned to NYC and continued working as a banker mason. By this time, Alan Bird had replaced Chris Hannaway and the yard was humming along. Later Jeep advanced into the setting-out shop with fellow apprentice, Cynie Linton. He had real misgivings about leaving banker masonry. I remember him grumbling despite the promotion.

The Setting-Out Shop

Jeep and Cynie worked directly with James Bambridge transferring the original architect’s drawings into full-scale tower drawings that would later be numbered and patterned into various zinc templates for the banker masons’ shop. The masons used to laugh when he would step in to help an apprentice understand the complex templates. “Uh oh, Jeep’s got that look on his face!” This is not a look you wanted to see, as it usually meant an irretrievable mistake had been made in the stone work. If you had trouble understanding the templates he and Cynie were the ones to see.

As things slowed down in the setting-out shop, a new opportunity arose; a competition for the new carving apprenticeship under the tutelage of Nick Fairplay. Jeep scored in the top five. He served his three years and was later appointed as head carver. During this period, he contributed many celebrated carvings to the tower. Jeep continued on in that position for a year until he was positioned as the head of the drafting and setting-out department.

As Chief Draftsman, Jeep also worked on the tower with Master Mason Steve Boyle, for whom he had the greatest respect. Boyle was not one to embrace the limelight and Jeep often commented on how he was the unsung hero who quietly puzzled together the massive stones on the tower, a truly monumental task.

Working on the Tower

Steve relayed a story about how instrumental Jeep was in the setting of the first course of stonework:

“It should be mentioned that Jeep deserves credit for the tower actually fitting on the building. Delays in scaffold erection meant that the first stones that we laid were rather hurriedly positioned. The deadline for the installation of the Jerusalem Stone rapidly approached. The setting of this historic cornerstone included a well-publicized ceremony featuring high wire aerialist, Philippe Petit delivering a silver trowel to the Bishop of New York for the official blessing. Since the scaffolding was only partially in place, it hadn’t been possible to lay out all of the building lines as planned before Bambridge had to return to the UK.

This was alarming to me at the time as it meant this task might fall to me. Sure enough, as we began to set more stone it was clear that the first stones had been set too far over to the North resulting in the new stone overhanging by about a half inch. I called Bambridge in the U.K. and he told me I would have to do the setting out. He understood my uneasiness, but told me I could always rely on Jeep for help with this and he was right. Jeep had a thorough understanding of the whole project by this time and knew exactly what to do. Great thanks to him; everything ended up where it was supposed to be.”

-Master Mason Stephen Boyle

Cathedral Stoneworks

In 1989, he stepped away from drafting to join the carving team working on the West Front. Work on the Central Portal statuary had recently resumed under the direction of Simon Verity. For Jeep, the carving ended too soon. The Jewish Museum awarded a major contract to the stoneyard. It was an early 20th Century Gothic Revival building on 5th Avenue. The drafting department was about to become a very busy place.

This was the beginning of a new era. A commercial venture was underway with the goal of replenishing the depleted Cathedral coffers by taking on independent projects. It was a good effort, but the partnership with Cathedral Stoneworks ultimately marked the end of the tower project and any dream of completing the Cathedral. Jeep continued working as Chief Draftsman until he left in 1993.

He Wore Many Hats

He was one of the few who wore most of the hats available in the Cathedral stone yard. Those hats included sawyer, estimator, banker mason, setting-out, stone carver and fixer mason (on the tower). He would laugh and say that the only job he didn’t do was to run the planer. That position belonged to Nelson Otero, and to only Nelson Otero.

D’Ellis often expressed his admiration for other modest people who produced great stone work for the tower. He often referred to Yves Pierre and Angel Escobar. He once said that “The very first time Angel picked up a chisel, he knew what to do with it. And, it was a little unnerving.” These guys were natural stone cutters, but not inclined to talk in front of the T.V. cameras.

Beyond the Cathedral, he would spend the next eight years teaching, designing, cutting and carving stone on large public and private projects with Kincannon Studios in Texas until his death in 2001. I can say that throughout this period, as busy as we were, he was ready to drop everything and return to NYC if the team reunited to finish the tower. There’s no doubt about that.

■

• The author of this post, Joseph Kincannon, is the younger brother of D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon. Joseph is a teacher and architectural sculptor. Professor Kincannon is currently the Chair of Stone Carving at the American College of Building Arts.