I made a stone sculpture! Basically I’m interested in cathedrals so wanted to know how one gets made. The answer is: slowly and with a ton of work.

The video below shows shows how it emerged, which I think is more interesting / unfamiliar than the finished object.

It’s not going to win any awards but it is recognisably a piece of art – even if not very brilliant art – which is a great improvement from half-way through the term, when it just looked like an accident! (I’d also never made a video before!)

Sound on:

The name

I hope that you like its cheery title! It means: shadow of death 🤣

My husband asked what it’s called, and I thought it can’t be called just “Untitled 2” or something. So I was thinking of names. This name is inspired by the amazing service I went to at St Bartholomew The Great (England’s oldest parish church, apparently): the Ô Antiphons. So much incense in there that you can see it hanging in the air. That service has many references in that to Umbra Mortis 😱

(My husband thinks that can be abbreviated to just ‘um’… 😒)

The music

Lol. The whole idea came from a friend’s suggestion of having a Big Reveal party! I’m not hosting one of those, but that did prompt a Big Reveal video. I first thought of Thus Spake Zarathustra… but that reaches its ‘ta-da’ moment quite fast, and the process of carving is pretty involved that I needed music with more time before the reveal. Zadok is perfect.

(In Zadok, that intro, though massively & rightly famous, is only actually 80 seconds long. Shows that you can do a lot with a little, if you’re good.)

That doesn’t look like a cathedral!

Indeed. My original plan was to make a quatrefoil, which are common in cathedrals. But it fast became clear that any shape which relies on symmetry, i.e., precision, is a bad idea. Abstract is more forgiving! For example, both the indentations on Umbra Mortis – on the front and back – were required to disguise scars which the stone already had when I got it.

The stone is Ancaster hard white. Quite difficult to work, apparently.

What about other crafts?

Yeah, I’m getting to them! This year (2024), I did some blacksmithing. Good God, that is hard work. [A friend who was a blacksmith helpfully pointed out that iron starts glowing at about 400 degrees, ie, it can be extremely hot and yet not look it. So don’t touch anything!]

Next year it’s stained glass 🙂