The Kincannon Brothers

from competition to commiseration…

When D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon and his younger brother Joseph worked together as banker masons at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, there was a quiet but definite fraternal competition. Joseph, five years younger, explains, “Jeep and I were more competitive. I suppose that’s because the end product was clearly defined through shop drawings and job tickets, no guess work. Although extremely complex, masonry work was straight up geometry, allowing the stone cutter to have a more clear-eyed focus on speed and production, leading to a more competitive drive.”

When both brothers were invited to work in the carving shed, however, Joseph says it was like “jumping into the abyss.” And the nature of the brothers’ competition changed.

He recalls,“even with drawings and/or models, there were surprises around every corner — a lot more uncertainty. And to add more pressure, the carvings had to be woven into finely finished stones that a banker mason had already labored over. Neither Jeep nor I felt confident enough to gloat. We were more likely compelled to commiserate. Nick (Fairplay) was very democratic, and articulate in his damning critiques.”

In temperament, the brothers were opposite sides of the coin. Jeep was more quiet and reserved, while Joseph was more outgoing.

Master Carver Nicholas Fairplay said they were like “chalk and cheese.” Nicholas was referring to their approach to carving and differing styles, but their individual personalities were probably factored into his assessment.

According to Nicholas, Jeep was “detail oriented but he found it very difficult to be bold and get out of the box.” By contrast, “Joseph was bold immediately and very fluid, very creative on his pieces.”  

When the brothers began designing and carving label stops for the lower levels of the south tower, they chose topics of interest to them. For instance, Jeep may have been inspired by mythology and forest creatures.

His delicately carved piece of a grotesque with swept back horns, long drooping ears, flowing beard and mustache looks like a young Pan or satyr. In ancient Greek religion Pan is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, and companion of the nymphs. Pan is usually represented as having the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. Jeep’s work resides on the West façade of St. Paul’s tower, facing Amsterdam Avenue.

For his next label stop carving Jeep worked on a whimsical little forest creature. This happy looking elf featured tight ringlets of hair, long pointed ears and flexing muscular arms. Jeep achieved depth with his exacting carving technique.

Jeep then dove into a common theme adopted by many Gothic stone carvers – a Green Man. In Celtic mythology, the Green Man represents the lord of the forest and the patron of animals and fertility. He is mainly a symbol of untamed nature. Branches or vines may sprout from the mouth, nostrils, or other parts of the face, and these shoots may bear flowers or fruit. Green Man, also known as a foliate head, first appeared in England during the early 12th century deriving from those of France. 

Jeep’s interpretation featured an exquisitely carved face emerging from thick and sinuously veined foliage on both sides of a creature’s head, with more foliage sprouting from his mouth.

Joseph’s carving style differed from his older brother’s as seen in the variety of his carvings, ranging from humorous creations to odd looking creatures. Two conveyed hidden messages.

If Jeep could make a Green Man, then Joseph chose a carving that could be called a Green Cat. A round-faced feline with tongue sticking out seems to emerge from a border of foliage and acorns. Joseph recalls “it was one of my earliest carvings. Damned thing put me through hell.”

While Joseph’s Green Cat can be seen on the tower’s west façade, his remaining three label stops are all set on the South elevation. 

The first carving with a hidden message can be seen in Joseph’s imp with his fingers in his ears.  He said “the stoneyard was struggling at the time. If memory serves there were a lot of layoffs, a management shakeup, accompanied by many painful meetings.”  Joseph kept his head down and kept on working – he didn’t want to hear it. But there was also another reason for the gesture, he explains, “The carving is pointed in the direction of my mother’s apartment building (on Broadway and W. 111 Street) and she can be a little long-winded. The gift-of-the-gab runs in the family, so this was an inside joke. Hence, the inspiration for this ugly little head is two-fold.”

A funny carving with deep set round eyes, wearing a brimless hat and using both hands to pull his mouth wide apart, elicited a comment from James Parks Morton, then Dean of the Cathedral. In a 2015 video interview the Dean remarked on the stone carving, “One of the things they recaptured was carving with a sense of humor,” he said, as he did his imitation of the funny looking carving. “It’s a scream,” he added.

Joseph had another secret hidden in a carving of a ragged-toothed grotesque with flaring nostrils and pointed ears. Joseph clearly had in mind that this secret could only be seen by someone on the ground looking up at this label stop on the east elevation. Recently, viewed through a camera with a super telephoto lens, a wonderfully carved detail of a face peacefully peering out from deep inside the creature’s wide open rounded mouth was visible. This carving is a masterpiece of skill and execution.

Together, Jeep and Joseph carved seven of the 14 label stops for the buttress gablets, among the earliest individually designed works to come out of the carving shed.

Both brothers worked for the Cathedral Institute and later the Cathedral Stoneworks for over 10 years. When construction stopped in the early 1990s Joseph and his wife Holly started Kincannon Studios in Austin, TX. Jeep joined them later and stayed with the stoneworking studio until he passed away in 2001.

Commenting on the Kincannon brothers, Master Mason Stephen Boyle also observed that, while their personalities may have been far different from each other,

both shared the same serious commitment to producing the highest standard of work no matter what area they were working in…both intensely focused and perfectionists.

– Master Mason Stephen Boyle

When is a grotesque a gargoyle?

Many people mistakenly believe that every carving on a Gothic church is a gargoyle.

The word is derived from the Old French gargouille, meaning “throat.” According to Wikipedia, in Gothic architecture, a gargoyle is a carved or formed grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing it from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between. Gargoyles are usually elongated fantastical animals because their length determines how far water is directed from the wall. When Gothic flying buttresses were used, aqueducts were sometimes cut into the buttress to divert water over the aisle walls. 

A grotesque is a fantastic or mythical figure carved from stone and fixed to the walls or roof of a building and does not project far from the wall.

Grotesques often depict whimsical, mythical creatures in dramatic or humorous ways. Although grotesques typically depict a wide range of subjects, they are often hybrids of different mythical, human, and animalistic features.

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• This is the third in a series of articles about the carvings on the Southwest Tower by Robert F. Rodriguez, an artist/photographer-in-residence at the Cathedral as these artworks were being created. All the images in this article were taken by the author. He spent more than 10 years documenting all facets of the construction work. His working life includes photo editor at Gannett Newspapers for 38 years and The Daily Mail for ten.