Stone sculpture

Owing to the permanence of the material, evidence can be found that even the earliest societies indulged in some form of stonework, though not all areas of the world have such abundance of good stone for carving as Egypt, Persia(Iran), Greece, Central America, India and most of Europe.

Carving stone into sculpture is an activity older than civilization itself, beginning perhaps with incised images on cave walls.

[1] Prehistoric sculptures were usually human forms, such as the Venus of Willendorf and the faceless statues of the Cycladic cultures of ancient Greece.

The earliest cultures used abrasive techniques, and modern technology employs pneumatic hammers and other devices.

Robert Manuel Cook notes that Ancient Greek copyists seem to have used many fewer points than some later ones, and copies often vary considerably in the composition as well as the finish.

[5] When he or she is ready to carve, the carver usually begins by knocking off, or "pitching", large portions of unwanted stone.

The carver places the point of the chisel or the edge of the pitching tool against a selected part of the stone, then swings the mallet at it with a controlled stroke.

He must be careful to strike the end of the tool accurately; the smallest miscalculation can damage the stone, not to mention the sculptor’s hand.

Most sculptors work rhythmically, turning the tool with each blow so that the stone is removed quickly and evenly.

Eventually, the sculptor has changed the stone from a rough block into the general shape of the finished statue.

The sculptor uses broad, sweeping strokes to remove excess stone as small chips or dust.

A riffler is a smaller variation of the rasp, which can be used to create details such as folds of clothing or locks of hair.

This abrading, or wearing away, brings out the colour of the stone, reveals patterns in the surface and adds a sheen.

Today, modern stone sculptors use diamond abrasives to sand in the final finishing processes.

Also, diamond pads mounted on water-cooled rotary air or electric sanders speed the finishing process.

In the 21st century, stone sculpture has grown to encompass technologically advanced tools including robots, super computers, and algorithms.

Carved stone human figures, known as Moai , on Easter Island
Unakoti group of rock reliefs of Shiva , Tripura , India. 11th century
Boundary wall featuring a dry stone sculpture, in the Forest of Dean , Gloucestershire , UK
Ancient Egyptian triple portrait in greywacke , a very hard sandstone that takes a fine polish
different mallets and pitching tool
Roughed out carvings
This shows the process of "pointing", the traditional method of making exact copies in stone carving. A point machine is used to measure points on the original sculpture (seen on the right) and transfer those points onto the stone copy (left). Here we see the very early stages, where points have been measured and marked on the stone copy. These markings point out the high points of the surface so that the stone carver knows which surfaces to sink and which to leave alone.
Sculptor Karen LaMonte examines Cumulus , a stone sculpture that she created with the help of weather models, a super computer, and robots.