Stone Will Answer: A Journey Guided by Craft, Myth and Geology

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Stone Will Answer: A Journey Guided by Craft, Myth and Geology

Stone Will Answer: A Journey Guided by Craft, Myth and Geology

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How can a stone be a boat? The chance discovery in a book, given to her by a stonemasonry tutor, of ‘a monochrome photograph of a knobbly and scratched stone boulder, containing two carved footprints’ spurs her on to investigate the phenomena of ‘footprint stones’. These are typically associated with saints and kings. The one in the photograph was the one that St Magnus, the former Magnus Erlendsson, twelfth-century Earl of Orkney, reputedly sailed across the Pentland Firth, his footprints magically remaining on its surface. If surfing saints seem slightly more interesting and relatable than the ones traditionally associated with gruesome endings then you are in good company as they are too for Searle, who sets out to find it, uncovering a treasure trove of folklore, as well as connections between boats and stones, as she does so. She takes us all further, from ideas of faith in place into seeking for knowing, a travelling in the field... with her subject, evening the condition, and so showing her workings out on a mother of a walk in circling the mattering of life. Taking life, taking a stone. Returning life. Turning stones. Mattering.

I say that we are taking this stone to Trondheim. I continue to tell her the story of Magnus and ancient Kings. At the age of twenty-six, Beatrice Searle crossed the North sea and walked 500 miles through Southern Norway on a medieval pilgrim path to Nidaros Cathedral, taking with her a 40-kilo stone from the West coast of Orkney.I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions. A story of determination and soul-searching... Compellingly narrated, entertaining and thought-provoking... treat yourself to a copy of this book and enjoy the journey Natural Stone Specialist The Power of Art: Stone Will Answer and An Indigo Summer Beatrice Searle and Ellie Evelyn Orrell Chaired by David Isaac

Adam Brookes Interviewed by Rana Mitter Fragile Cargo: China’s Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 4:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event Fascinated with the mysterious footprint stones of the ancient world, Beatrice follows pathways forged by travellers, saints and kings in an astonishing feat of human endurance. The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will. At the age of twenty-six, artist and Cathedral stonemason Beatrice Searle crossed the North Sea and walked 500 miles along a medieval pilgrim path through Southern Norway, taking with her a 40-kilogram Orcadian stone.

Roy Strong Interviewed by Richard Barber The Stuart Image: An Introduction to English Portraiture 1603 to 1649 Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event

I loved learning about the essence of stone, the craft of people who work with it and the impact that doing something different and brave can have upon our lives. All of this is intertwined with a fascinating travelogue type description of the pilgrimage with its challenges, traumas and moments of elation and triumph. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community. I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.Stone does answer, in its own irregular ways and through its unlikely combination of oppositions. It is both the purpose of travel as well as anchor. It is both weight and lightness, surface and depth, stillness and motion. It is sometimes said that stonemasons have a ‘feel’ for stone. This is something that comes from practice, hours spent working it into specific useful shapes. What is less well known is that this is a two-way street: the stone works on you. Searle has taken this relationship out into the wild, tested it in extreme conditions and come to know, unknow and re-learn her stone, which has forced similar processes upon herself. As she concludes, ‘I had thought it was an act of generosity to bring the stone; in the end it was our encounters with those on the path that revealed that I had been seeking and making real my own foundation myths’. Searle wanted to learn the “lessons” stone had to teach her but it’s the human spirit that emerges triumphant in this sparky blend of memoir and travelogue. There is the kindness of strangers she meets on the pilgrim path: fellow travellers who share food, mend trolley-wheels and add their footsteps to the Orkney Boat’s story. There is wisdom to be gleaned from the stories Searle tells about her fellow stonemasons: highly skilled craftspeople who repair and preserve the fabric of ancient buildings using techniques that have remained unchanged for 800 years.

Some of this left me scratching my head. Yet Searle is an excellent storyteller and when she simply describes the highs and lows of her journey, her narrative sings. Weaving between the joyful trusting determination of a singular intelligent and interested little girl, in her adulthood she draws her into this story so tenderly, whilst walking into the landscape of facing the peculiar monolithic impressions we live amongst. Storied impressions and whom we feel compelled to wield in the titanic efforts of believing in being human. As we learn with her what it takes, and all it takes along the way, to become a master of stone. A story of dedication and tenacity that is deeply moving and utterly captivating. Stone Will Answer is a truly remarkable book, a beautifully crafted tale of an artist's extraordinary journey. Searle seamlessly contemplates the meaning of craft, ancient myths, the mutability of stone and the transformations within her own life. Its rare to read a story of such artistic integrity. I felt bereft when I finished but also buoyed by a new found fascination with stone and all its many meanings. Sally Huband, author of Sea Bean Stone is the most awkward of materials. As any stonemason will tell you, it is heavy and difficult to move but also fragile and easily chipped. It can be ubiquitous but often differs in quality within one postcode, within one quarry, within even one section of one quarry. It is the byword for longevity but if incorrectly chosen and placed weathering beyond useful capacity within short decades. It demands a polymath knowledge of everything from art and architecture to chemistry, geology, geometry and more, for those of us drawn to it. Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t for such reasons that the characters attracted to stone are as uncompromising and hard to define as it is — read Fred Bower’s Rolling Stonemason (1936) or Seamus Murphy’s Stone Mad (1949), two of the foundational works of literary stonemasonry, and you’ll see what I mean. In recent years this slender tradition of stonemasons writing about stone has experienced a quiet revival of sorts with my own King of Dust (2019) and Andrew Ziminski’s The Stonemason (2020) to which is now added Beatrice Searle’s extraordinary Stone Will Answer. Her journey has been inspired by the stories she is told of Magnus Erlendsson, the Patron Saint of Orkney, by her stonemasonry college tutor, and a mason’s banker mark found on stones in both Lincoln Cathedral, where Beatrice is an apprentice, and Nidaros Domkirke (Trondheim Cathedral), which starts a conversation between the masons at each.It is also a treatise on human relationships, to places and to other people; and the meaning these relationships will always hold in a person's life, even when severed. I cannot recommend this book enough, and encourage anyone with a love for art, nature, history, and philosophy to give it a read. It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories. Writer, artist and stonemason Beatrice Searle and artist and designer Ellie Orrell reflect on their work and the transformative and healing power of art and craft. That, at least, was the theory. Shortly after disembarking in Bergen, Searle experienced the first of many episodes of self-doubt that would dog her journey. None of the passing tourists seemed remotely interested in her stone and suddenly she found herself standing alone in the pouring rain, wondering what on earth she was doing there. It was a dispiriting moment yet oddly, it was at this point that Searle’s story came alive.



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