Books

This is a lovely little book for anyone who has an interest in craftsmanship and materiality.Its purpose is to assess the suitability of British stones for the art of letter cutting and by doing so takes in the viewpoint of the geologist (Steve) and the artist (Lida).The book is written almost in the form of a conversation between these two.Lida talks about the properties of the stone in a tactile manner; its degrees of hardness or softness, the sharpness of a chiselled line, how deep the letters should be cut, how often the chisel requires resharpening, the readability of the finished letters on the surface of the stone.Steve responds with information on the geological properties of rocks, their age and distribution across the British Isles and the origin of their textures.A common theme emerges during Steve and Lida's conversation as together they transform rocks into suitable stones for letter cutting.We learn, perhaps not surprisingly, that hard, finegrained rocks such as the slates of North Wales and Cumbria are the most suitable stones.They are hard enough to produce a sharp line under the chisel yet soft enough to work.We find that granite is an unsuitable stone for letter-cutting despite it being hard, taking a good polish and a sharp cut, but the finished lettering will be hard to read against the coarse-grained texture typical of granites and almost impossible to decipher against the phenocryst-rich Shap Granite.We also discover that pretty much all British lithologies younger than the Lower Cretaceous Purbeck Group are unsuitable stones; too soft and crumbly and carved lettering will quickly melt away with the effects of weather and pollution.The book covers the merits of British slates, Carboniferous sandstones and Jurassic carbonates as suitable stones for letter cutting.It should also be said that this is also a very wellproduced and well-illustrated book.It is sturdily bound, with high-quality photographs and charming hand-drawn diagrams.In all it provides a brief but