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Stone carvers ere devoted to craft
WASHINGTON - "We work
here at the Cathedral because it is
an honor as well as a way to make
a living. I’ve been here half of my
life. My father was here before me.
I’m the fifth generation in my
family to be a stone carver. To do
another job...it’s my trade, what I
was born to do.”
Vincent Palumbo, 48, doesn’t
look much like a movie star, with
his thinning curly hair, his rough
workingman’s hands, his shoes
covered with half a lifetime of
stone dust. He is a stone carver, an
Italian immigrant who came to
this country in 1961 to join his
father as a carver on the massive
Gothic-style Washington
Cathedral, under construction
since 1907.
Occupational Folklore
But Palumbo and three of his
former colleagues at the Cathedral
are the stars of a new film. The 30-
minute documentary was
produced by folklorist Marjorie
Hunt of the Smithsonian In
stitution’s Office of Folklife
Programs, who has been studying
the carvers and their way of life for
several years, and independent
producer Paul Wagner.
What comes through in both the
film and in interviews with the
carvers is the burning intensity,
the almost passionate devotion
they have to their craft. For most,
it is rooted in their lives in the old
country, in a childhood in which
their lives already revolved
around stone.
Palumbo, for example, says that
it never occurred to him to earn his
living in any other way.
“To tell the truth, no, he says in
heavily accented English that is
nevertheless perfectly, un
derstandable once he begins
talking about carving.
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"I started with my father when I
was 9 years old. Soon he gave me
chisels, a piece of stone in the shop
where he was working, and asked
me to try to do this or that. Soon it
was no more a joke, it was for real,
and I’ve got to pay attention. Now
I’ve been doing this all my life; I
feel strange doing something
else.”
Following the Sculptor
Most, though not all, of the work
carved at the Washington
Cathedral involves recreating in
stone the creation of a sculptor. It
is work that involves a certain
subjugation of the carver’s ego in
the interest of faithfully
duplicating a clay model.
“The good carver is like a
symphony conductor who is loyal
to the composer and is trying to
create in sound what the composer
has created,” says sculptor
Frederick E. Hart, who has
designed a senes of sculptures
recreated in stone on the
Cathedral’s west facade.
Hart brings a special ap
preciation of the skills of the stone
carver Before he began an in
dependent career as a sculptor, he
spent three years as an apprentice
carver at the Cathedral, to learn
how to work with stone and what
could be done with it. He worked
under master carver Roger
Morigi, who retired in 1978 after 60
years of carving stone. To Hart,
and to many others, Morigi was the
best of all.
“He’s so fine because he’s so
utterly loyal to the sculptor,” says
Hart. “He doesn’t have a point of
view. He wants to carve the best
way he can to recreate what the
sculptor has created. The worst
carvers are those who want to be
sculptors.”
Mongi, still vigorous and active
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at 76, agrees.
“You don’t count,” he says of the
carver’s role. “You’ve got to in
terpret from the sculptor’s model.
If you have your own idea, you
can’t detach yourself. What the
model has, you reproduce.”
So loyal to the sculptor is Mongi
that he once told Hunt:
“If it was upside down, but they
put it like that, I’m gonna do it
upside down. That’s the way you
like, that’s the way you get! ”
Palumbo follows in the same
tradition:
“To a sculptor, everything he
puts in means something to him. If
we change it, it’s not his work any
more.”
But that doesn’t mean the carver
doesn’t put something of himself
into the Indiana limestone when he
carves it.
“The sculptor is the creator, but
the carver is the performer,” says
Palumbo, echoing Hart’s analogy.
“We do the statue. Yes, we copy
the model, but when the finished
product goes into the Cathedral,
we have put our feelings into the
stone. We have put life into it.”
There is an unbelievable amount
of carved stone at the Cathedral,
dating back to its earliest days,
and yet there is still a tremendous
amount remaining to be carved.
The number of carvers working at
any time depends to some degree
on money available, and to some
degree on the availability of good
carvers. At one time Morigi
supervised a staff of 12 carvers at
the Cathedral; Palumbo now has
two assistants.
Both Morigi and Palumbo are
acutely aware that they are among
the last of a line of stone carvers
dating to medieval times. Styles
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Performance in Stone
Using the same kinds of tools that stone carvers have been
using for centuries, Vincent Palumbo works on the final
details of a statue to be placed oh display in the 14th century
style Washington Cathedral. Palumbo is one of only a handful
of traditional stone carvers still plying the ancient craft in this
country; most buildings today have little or no ornamental
stonework in their design.
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