Diagrama de temas

  • Lesson Overview

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    • This lesson introduces an exemplary procedure of marble carving that is followed when working on an object, as described by the research participants of CRAEFT from Tinos Island, Greece. The steps include their procedure from order to delivery and are enriched with information concerning specific objects. The terms used for every step are by the Guidebook of the Museum of Marble Crafts of PIOP, written by Alekos E. Florakis and published by PIOP in Athens in 2009.

  • Design

    • The participants keep an archive of designs that can be adjusted to the agreed size with the customers. Two examples that differ in needs include the making of a sink and a religious iconostasis. For the first case, the craftspersons will show to the customers an archive of previously made sinks to get an idea of their taste and help them visualize what they want. A discussion on the space will take place to decide the final shape and size of the sink. Finally, the customers might also desire a decorative carving. The latter case, that of an iconostasis for a church shrine, is more demanding. A thorough conversation on the decoration will take place. After, they will calculate and make the linear design that will take into account the wall size, how it needs to be separated to create the necessary doors, where and how large the decorative carvings are going to be, and finally, the size and number of empty spaces reserved for icons.

  • Buying marble

    • The participants generally buy marble ‘sheets’, that is marble plates, from the splitter and then cut them in the sizes they need with their cutting machine. Before making an order, they have in mind a general idea of the size of the needed marble piece. A differentiating point is the kind of marble they will need, e.g. Tinian, Dionysos, etc.

  • Wetting the marble

    • They perform this task either while buying the material or after, at their workshop before starting to work on the marble. They wet it with water to check if it has natural breaks. In other words, they see the marble more in-depth, its colors. By observing how deep the water goes, they can more or less calculate the size of the object they can make. It can happen to see a break later while working.

  • Cutting

    • First, they cut the marble piece according to the outline of the design with the cutting machine, and then it goes to the outdoor room with the big absorber. Sometimes they leave a bit of extra room to be able to work more if needed.

  • Removing


    • In Tinos, it is called skapitsarisma. The participants also call it ‘breaking’. It is the process of manually cutting the border of the marble piece to make it look uneven rather than square, triangle, or rectangle. They ‘break’ the edges to make it look old.


       

       

       

  • Drawing and Marking and Carving

    • First, the design is drawn on the marble. As the participants mention, drawing the design is “the alpha and omega of our work; that is, even while working, we are drawing, we work a bit more, erase it, and draw again.” No matter the object or its design, this is a fundamental approach to marble carving. Marking is the process of slightly engraving the drawn design with a hammer and chisel. That way, they separate the parts of the design, such as the foreground and background. Then, they start carving in a successive way of removing marble. Indicatively, the depth created, e.g. in a marble floor tile with relief, is a half-centimetre.





  • Plasticity

    • If the design entails a cavity, they will carve it more in a round manner to create plasticity on the marble.

  • Finishing

    • That is the last step of finishing the carving with a file. If the customers prefer the object to be polished, they will finish it with a thick paper or file to create smoother surfaces. Then they will work with emery paper, starting from thick to thin to erase the finishing lines and until the surface is polished.



  • Patina

    • If the customers wish the object to look old, they will also perform a patina to add the desired coloring.