AiR – I : Starting to cut stone…
Earlier this year I was privileged to be invited to spend three months in Idar-Oberstein, Germany, as Artist in Residence at the Department of Gemstones and Jewellery at Trier University, in partnership with the Jakob Bengel Foundation.
The first few weeks were times of wandering, adjusting, absorbing, wondering and reflecting. It was such a joy to have the opportunity to take time without wasting time.
I gradually met a truly international student cohort: from Australia, Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Taiwan, Turkey, and the US. I met my first Kazakstani only to be told, “oh, Daniel is also from Kazakstan”, as well as being introduced to the stone cutting, shaping and faceting machines by a native of Georgia who came to Idar Oberstein to study and has stayed to commune with the stones and teach cutting techniques to the students.
I was curious to see whether I could preserve the natural fractures and inclusions within this quartz,
Some of the cuts I made in the quartz with a diamond bladed circular saw.
I learned that granite is considered soft; marble is even softer; quartz comes alive with fiery sparks when being cut with the stone saw as it’s very susceptible to changes in temperature, and that agate, the stone upon which Idar-Oberstein is built, is really hard to cut.
My home from home for three months, the Artist in Residence's apartment is in a steep sided valley in Oberstein, right next to the incredible Jakob Bengel Industrial Monument. Open for tours six days a week, the factory is full of truly impressive, old, mechanical machines that still operate like clockwork (thankfully only for short demonstrations on a single machine these days). The family used to live in an apartment on the top floor and the whole building shook when the machines were running at full capacity. Each of these machines is still capable of making 8 meters of chain in one hour.
The chain making machines ran 24 hours a day, manned by just two men, working in shifts.
A few weeks into my Residency I gave an illustrated Artist’s Talk to the students. I called it “Play in the time of Covid 19”, as I think that it’s really important to maintain a sense of play and exploration in a creative practice; not just whilst within the privileged walls of an educational institution.
After that, it was time to really start to learn; to note how the stones felt in the saw, how they sounded on a grinding wheel or spindle and how they behaved on different grades of faceting wheels, or laps. Once I started to have a tiny hint of a feel for some of that, I began to play and to pursue ideas that had started to form.
