Category: Profiles in Stone

This month, my colleague at Divine Stone, Mark Saxe received the 2023 New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He is among a handful of artists to be so honored. His award recognizes his artistry as a stone sculptor and his many years of teaching and mentoring stone carvers emphasizing hand carving.

For more than four decades a prominent and diverse group pf painters, weavers, sculptors, dancers, musicians, storytellers, poets, actors, playwrights, potters and supporters of the arts have been honored.

This year’s recipients come from every corner of the state, showcasing the immense possibilities of the arts across New Mexico. These artists are musicians, authors, sculptors and designers who push the boundaries of telling stories about the state and their lives through art. I am proud to recognize and show off such talent to the rest of the world.

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham

Mark was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, served his country in Vietnam, and while traveling in Europe, discovered his love of stone. Completing his MFA on the GI Bill, he became an apprentice stonemason before moving to New Mexico to open his stoneyard and begin his long career as a sculptor. He has lived in New Mexico for 43 years.

Mark is an author, lecturer, curator and member of the Stone Carvers Guild of North America. Mark’s connection to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine goes back some 35 years.

In His Own Words

“My connection to the stoneyard began in the late 1980’s when John Barton, AIA, the son-in-law of the Dean of the Cathedral, James Parks Morton, invited me to see the stone working program. I was offered a place to stay in the Bishop’s guest quarters and visited the stone shed attached to the cathedral several times. 

“John introduced me to the cutters and carvers. I remember no names, only the intensity and dedication that showed in the faces. It was likely that I met Jose Tapia, Tim Smith and Eddie P. They were working…cutting and carving some of the thousands of stones necessary to complete the Cathedral’s towers. I wished I was one of them, but it was not to be, living in New Mexico with a stone masonry business that needed me and I needed it. However, my connection to the stoneyard has continued since that tour.

I would have traded places with any one of them.

– Mark Saxe

“The light filtering down from the skylights, the fine dust of limestone in the air and the tap, tap, tap of hammer on chisel was mesmerizing. The vibe was intoxicating, especially to me who had already spent the last 13 years working with stone. I would have traded places with any of those carvers but I had a home and business to take care of. Upon leaving the Cathedral I had a feeling that we would meet again in the future. That experience had a profound affect on me and because of it I met many people who worked on the cathedral, most notably Joseph Kincannon, Nick FairPlay, and John Barton. All of them have added to my life and work.” – Mark Saxe

Stone Carving Workshops

I met Mark some 16 years ago when I was working in a stoneyard in Santa Fe, NM. Eventually I was able to enroll in his Stone Carving Workshops. Seven days of intensive hands on carving with appropriate demonstrations by Mark and his staff.

Thank you “Chief” for all you have done to impact New Mexico and the stone world.

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• Mark Saxe Sculpture – https://www.marksaxe.com/portfolio
• Sax Stone Carving – https://www.saxstonecarving.com

The Stones That Were Left Behind

In early 1988, Amy Brier, recently arrived to the Cathedral as a stone carver, set about creating a figure for one of the many carved finial stones for the south tower. Starting with a pencil sketch, then a clay model, the figure of an Old Testament rabbi started to emerge from the limestone block on Amy’s banker. This is the first of the stories behind the stones.

Thirty-five years later, the completed stone, a gablet apex finial, does not look down from a lofty niche above Amsterdam Avenue. Instead, it sits in a heap among numerous stones that never made it to their intended spots on the south tower when the uncompleted project ended in the early 1990s, hence these stories.

The stones are stored primarily in two areas on the south side of the Cathedral. The majority of the stones are tucked alongside a brick wall and a buttress pier near the tranquil Biblical Garden.  Another area is fenced off, sharing space with some discarded, unused or unwanted objects. Some of the stones are chipped from being carelessly moved or not properly stacked while others are developing a greenish patina on the edges from moisture.  The images below were taken on April 2, 2023 by Robert F. Rodriguez.

Amy’s Stone in 2023

This is where Amy’s stone rests, among a pile of blocks and debris. Her carving of the rabbi includes details of a kippah or yarmulke for the head covering, tallit for the prayer shawl, and tefillin, the two leather boxes holding passages from the Torah and worn on the bicep and forehead. She recalls that her family did not like her interpretation of the rabbi’s face. They claim the rabbi has a large nose and felt it stereotyped Jews. (Amy is Jewish.)

Amy, now 63, teaches stone carving and sculpting among other disciplines as Chair of the Fine Arts department at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, Indiana. 

Why wasn’t this stone up on the South Tower?

Stephen Boyle speculates the reason for Amy’s stone not being set on the tower. He said that the carving was probably destined for the South or West elevations atop a gablet apex stone. Some of these stones were not carved in time and therefore not set in place. Amy’s finial carving (topmost stone) did not have the base on which it would rest.

When asked her feelings about her rabbi carving not being set on the tower, Amy reflected on her six years at the Cathedral. She credits the Stoneyard program with guiding her career path in stone work and teaching. “I never would have had that without the Cathedral,” she said.

Amy added, “Part of what I learned there was none of these (the stones) were mine. You finished it and it was done. The work was for a greater cause.”

She feels sad for all the stones on the ground and all the work that went into them. “I can’t cry over one piece,” she said, “if it’s down on the ground, maybe it’s better.”

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• Our thanks to Photo Journalist Robert F. Rodriguez for this series of stories about the origin of the stones in the cutting and carving operations, who worked on the stone and where some of them have been waiting.

After the consecration of 1911 of what was then constructed, little new construction occurred. In 1916 the foundations for the Nave began but money ran out concurrent with the outbreak of WWI. It was not until Bishop Manning that the construction of the Nave took off.

William Thomas Manning was elected Bishop of New York on January 20, 1921. Manning was outspoken, a strong leader, with strong opinions. He was determined to see the Cathedral and the diocese play a prominent role in national affairs. Manning intended to bring the Cathedral structure to completion, so as to make it a persuasive platform for wide influence.

Bishop Manning became what Bishop Henry Codman Potter before him, and Dean James Parks Morton after him: promoter, advocate, impresario and charismatic champion. Newspapers discovered that “Bishop Manning was good copy”, an important civic figure as well as leader within his own ecclesiastical family.

The Big Fund Drive

The pace of cathedral construction follows the pace of money raising. Bishop Manning understood the cost of the Nave would be $15,000,000, the equivalent of $255 million today. Some of the enthusiasm from school children, societies, churches, poor people, rich people was organic. Most was due to a well crafted campaign professionally run by Tamblyn and Brown who wrote the book on fund raising, literally.

Tamblyn and Brown was engaged, not to do the actual work of soliciting gifts, but to organize the campaign. They would do the vast amount of clerical work, suggest plans and methods and give advice. There were long discussions with Tamblyn and Brown and an elaborate plan and agreement worked out. Eighteen months passed before the first meeting of the campaign executive committee. The kick-off did not begin until four years after Bishop Manning’s election.

In the meantime, the Bishop personally appealed for gifts. Among his many religious duties, he wrote letters, sent literature, made calls, referred to the gifts of others and used an infinite variety of means to appeal to possible donors.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, National Chairman of the Cathedral Campaign Committee, chaired the great core event of the campaign. The rally at Madison Square Garden on January 18, 1925 united all of New York on behalf of the effort.

The rally was attended by 15,000 with many more listening on the radio. It was said that 5,000 were turned away. This may have been due to the questionable zeal of someone who had two tickets distributed for each available seat in the Garden.

Success For All

Neither The Bishop nor Roosevelt were figure heads. They each worked harder than anyone in the endeavor. They knew the mission was correct, the money was out there and they needed to create the enthusiasm and the fervor for the undertaking. There was an all-star track meet in Yankee stadium. Vince Richard played Bill Tilden on the championship court of Forest Hills. The worlds leading polo players vied at Meadowbrook. The Bishop was even taken out onto the ice at intermission of a hockey match at the garden for the benefit if the Sports Bay at the Cathedral.

The 1925 fund raised $10,000,000 and lead the way for more funds to be raised. One rule that had been prevalent since the beginning was that there should be no debt upon the Cathedral. All of the construction contracts were written so that the work could progress only as money allowed.

After 26 years as Bishop of the Diocese of New York, and the completion of the Nave and remodeling of the Choir, Manning retired. Bishop Manning and construction of the Nave was complete.

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• The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Rev. George W. Wickersham
• The Living Cathedral, Howard E Quirk
• Prudently With Power: Life of William Thomas Manning, W. D. F. Hughes
• Strangers and Pilgrims, Francis J. Sypher, Jr.

The death of George Heins in 1907 effectively ended the contract of Heins and LaFarge with the Cathedral. Grant LaFarge continued supervision of the then parts of the Cathedral under construction. This ended with the completion of the crossing dome and the consecration of 1911. Ralph Adams Cram was appointed the consulting architect.

Bishop Henry Colman Potter was the force behind the selection of the initial design. He was attracted to the Byzantine/Romanesque/Gothic design, in part because it suggested internationalism and ecumenism. The foundation of that design, the enormous crossing, also appealed. It would be the Cathedral’s primary space, where large numbers would gather in a single body to see and hear.

From the very beginning, some members of the Cathedral corporation had favored a more purely Gothic style. After Bishop Potter’s death, criticism of the design had become more outspoken. Additionally, in the early 1900’s the style of the design’s popularity wasn’t what it was in the 1890’s.

Ralph Adams Cram was the county’s foremost expert on Neo-Gothic architecture. The Firm of Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson was engaged in multiple church and collegiate projects at the time.

Transforming to Gothic

The main issue that Cram inherited was the proportions of the existing structure. The enormous crossing, the central element of Heins and LaFarge’s design, was 90 feet by 90 feet. When Cram told partner Bertram Goodhue that they might be getting involved in the Cathedral,

I wondered what in the world we could do if we were forced to adhere to the present foundations

– Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue

Using the crossing width as the determining element for the width of the nave and determining a length for the nave in order to have a proportional Gothic relationship to the existing structure, Cram proceeded to solve the problem. Cram writes: “The original building had been laid out on a system of squares, not with the oblong areas of a normal Gothic church, and naturally, since it was more or less Romanesque. This was fortunate since, in order to do no violence to what existed, this setting-out had to be continued and this implied sexpartite vaulting.”

Cram lengthened the church to 601 feet. Instead of building a traditional three aisle church consisting of a nave and two side aisles, he designed 146-foot-wide, five-aisle church.

The Problem Meets an Elegant Solution

Cram introduced smaller intermediate piers in the primary arcade of the nave. The piers of the nave alternate between 16 feet and 6 feet in diameter. Each of the slender piers is composed of 53 course of solid granite, and each course weighs 4 tons. The large pillars have a granite base and a granite interior shaft faced with limestone. He resolved the nave into a system of four great squares or double bays, rather than eight rectangular bays. He lifted the intermediate piers as well as the primary piers to an enormous height (nearly 100 feet) and then pushed back the clerestory to a secondary line of piers. The aisles in between were then lifted to the full height of the nave vault. All this achieved an unprecedented amplitude (double that of any medieval cathedral) as well as a dramatic height and a remarkable play of light and shadow.

Here then was a chance completely to differentiate this particular cathedral from all others of the Gothic mode, so not only was the interior worked out on a system of columns alternating with massive piers, but the buttresses were alternately single and double.

– Ralph Adams Cram

Cram continues…”Aisles had always been low, so that the clerestory came over the main arcade, with the result that great churches always seemed narrow and closely confined between crowding walls….here in New York the clerestory was pushed out to the line of the aisle walls, so giving a width of 100 feet between the containing walls, while the aisles themselves were raised in height to that of the nave, a greater elevation than occurs elsewhere in any Gothic Cathedral.”

French Gothic Influence

“Classical scale and detail of French Gothic became the inspirational influence and so, I suppose, the cathedral nave and west front are more French than anything else, though I still think it would be hard to find any instance of direct copying.”

Cram solved the design problems in quick order. However, construction waited for the funds to arrive.

Ralph Adams Cram – Supporter of Arts and Crafts

Cram, throughout his career, recognized the critical nature of craftspeople to carry out the final product. He sought out these special people in all areas, stained glass artists, wood carvers, sculptors and stone carvers.

Architecture by itself and without the cooperation of the other arts is almost helpless. It is true that architecture is the coordinating art, but the architect must be able to count on artists of every type to work with him in creating the finished product.

– Ralph Adams Cram

After the Nave

Finally in 1938, sufficient funds became available to proceed with the work of modifying the interior of the choir. With the interior of the nave completed, a temporary altar was moved into it and a temporary wall put up. The exterior of the Heins & LaFarge designed structure needed no modification. There were enough Gothic elements to flow into the new nave exterior. The ornate interior of that structure, however, characterized by byzantine domes and romanesque arches made for an uncomfortable transition to the majestic Gothic nave.

At the east end of the apse was a semi dome of red Guastavino structural tile that was to display a mosaic of Christ. Yellow-green Guastavino tile groined vaults surmounted the choir stalls. Cram’s renovation included replacing the semi-dome with a seven cell Gothic vault framing seven clerestory windows. Three quadripartite Gothic vaults replaced the glazed tile vaults.

The Choir modifications took three years. These changes created design elements that became sympathetic with the nave.

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• Have I A “Philosophy of Design”, Ralph Adams Cram, Pencil Points (magazine), Volume XIII, November 1932
• Strangers and Pilgrims: A Centennial History of the Laymen’s Club of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Sypher, F.J.
• Ralph Adams Cram, American Medievalist, Douglas Shand-Tucci
• Gotham Gothic: An Appreciation of Ralph Adams Cram, Thomas Fedorek

Liverpool Cathedral appointed Thomas Gerald Murphy chief carver in 1935. In 1904, the year Tom Murphy was born, King Edward VII laid the Foundation Stone for the Liverpool Cathedral. At the official completion in 1978, he had spent 44 years working on the Cathedral. He continued carving for several years as there was always one more detail. Tom Murphy, Master Stone Carver received the honor of Member of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth on June 26, 1979.

Murphy apprenticed to the firm of Earp, Hobbs & Miller, a highly successful firm of architectural sculptors and stone carvers, from 1919 to 1927, and qualified at Manchester School of Art in 1927. He began work with the firm of H.H. Martyn and worked on the Palace of Westminster between 1928 and 1930. Murphy later assisted with the carving of the Queensway Tunnel Entrance in Liverpool and the Gladstone Dock Development before coming to the Liverpool Cathedral.

The Master Builder Calls For a Carver

Murphy and St. John’s master builder Jim Bambridge spoke often on the phone and corresponded. Bambridge persuaded Tom to come to the Cathedral for two weeks in 1983. He made models and sketches for future carvers. At the time, 3,300 blocks of limestone were cut and finished in 4 years of work. However, there were no carvers. A Gothic cathedral needs carvers. At 79 years old, Murphy had one last carving to finish on the west front in Liverpool, but Jim Bambridge was an old friend and he had some curiosity about St. John’s.

Usually, Tom Murphy, Master Stone Carver worked from a drawing that he or someone else has made. He marked the stone with a compass or pencil to outline proportions. The markings were not intricate, there must be room for inspiration.

There’s a lot more to carving than just cutting stone. If you can’t see it in the block, you might as well go home.

– Tom Murphy

As he did his carvings, he also assessed the work of an apprentice. This apprentice will probably be sent to England to study stone-carving. “It is time,” Bambridge said “to get the new generation started.”

An Apprentice’s Memory

Joseph Kincannon remembers Tom’s brief stay after almost 40 years. “He was the sweetest guy ever. A real craftsman. Typical of carvers, he only used hammers. I remember this seeming strange, as we mostly used mallets which is more of a banker mason’s tool. His accuracy throwing that hammer was noticed, and admired by all. He knocked out a couple crocketts. He worked stone effortlessly, always by hand.”

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• Time Magazine, November 13, 1978
• New York Times, May 14, 1983
• Queens Birthday Honors, 1979
• Biographical information – Sean B. Murphy