Sculpting in stone: the appeal of sandstone, limestone and ...

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It may come as no surprise that one of the most prevalent materials in the history of sculpture is stone &#; a versatile set of naturally occurring minerals that artists have carved since prehistoric times. The durability of stone has allowed sculptural and architectural fragments to endure throughout history.

Ancient carving

Even before stone was used as a sculptural material, it was used as an artist's tool. The earliest works of art made by humans include ancient cave paintings, some carved with flint.

The earliest stone sculpture known to humankind is the Venus of Hohle Fels, which was discovered in southwestern Germany in and was made between 33,000 and 38,000 years ago.

The Ain Sakhri lovers figurine in the British Museum is the oldest known sculpture of human beings making love and is at least 10,000 to 11,000 years old.

The natural shape of calcite cobble was moulded to represent the outline of entwined lovers. It is named after the place where it was found, in the cave of Ain Sakhri in the Wadi Khareitoun, outside of Bethlehem.

Another example of early carved stone sculptures in the UK are sheela-na-gigs, figurative carvings of unclothed women displaying their genitals to ward away bad omens and evil spirits. This kind of 'architectural grotesque' can be found all over Britain, in the corners and crevices of churches, cathedrals and castles.

To find out more about these wonderful carvings, explore The Sheela Na Gig Project.

In Romanesque and medieval architecture, stone 'corbels' (decorative fragments and structural supports) were carved to resemble grotesque figures &#; monstrous faces and gargoyles. Like sheela-na-gigs, gargoyles had a direct function &#; to drive evil spirits out of the church. Typically they resembled clawed ravens, dogs or hybrid creatures that could instil fear in the eye of the beholder.

Marble mania

By the time the Renaissance had flourished across Europe, marble was the most sought-after stone. Although rare and expensive, it was used widely in both architecture and sculpture.

Marble was prized for its translucency, durability and naturalistic physical properties.

Renaissance Italian artists favoured marble for its allusion to the classical world &#; Hellenistic Greece and the Roman Empire.

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Popular marbles included Pentelic, Parian and Carrara, which were transported across Europe to Britain. Before marble mania spread from Italy to Northern Europe and Britain, artists often used indigenous British metamorphic rocks: limestone and sandstone.

Particularly in the eighteenth-century Neoclassical period, sculptors continued to imitate the marble busts from antiquity, with many members of the British nobility and elite presenting themselves in white stone.

Portland limestone was another type of stone regularly used by artists working in Britain, as seen in this sculpture Father Time with Putto found at Belton House. This typically English rock is quarried from the Isle of Portland, off the coast of Dorset.

A grey-white stone, Portland limestone is the stone found most ubiquitously across London. Architectural landmarks such as Buckingham Palace, St Paul's Cathedral and the British Museum were constructed with this stone.

The use of stone in architecture also allowed for decorative carvings on the facades and friezes of buildings. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, public stone sculptures became increasingly prevalent as war memorials were commissioned, particularly following the First World War.

Modern sculpture

One of Britain's most famous sculptors, Henry Moore (&#;), often carved in stone.

Although many of his most famous outdoor sculptures were cast in bronze, Moore once described himself as 'naturally... more a carver... than a modeller.' It is estimated that over the course of his career, he used over 41 different types of stone.

Another titan of British modernism, Barbara Hepworth (&#;), also carved in stone. Hepworth was friends with Moore, and both sculptors were working in the aftermath of early twentieth-century modernism, when sculptors like Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and critics such as Roger Fry advocated for a 'truth to materials'.

The Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden in St Ives, Cornwall is full of her bronze, wood and stone works. Also on display are her sculpting tools: chisels, saws and hammers.

Stone is still used widely today by contemporary artists. In this video made for Art UK by Culture Street, sculptor Dawn Rowland demonstrates how she carves from blocks of stone to produce her figurative sculptures.

Lydia Figes, Content Editor at Art UK

Further reading

For more Stone Sculpture Manufacturerinformation, please contact us. We will provide professional answers.

Welcome to the #8 in our series on Sculptors' Materials. This week we are looking at sculpting in stone. 

The history of stone art takes us as far back as to the Palaeolithic era. People have carved into rock, painted on rocky cave walls, made figurines from stone, and toward the end of the Stone Age, constructed crude stone architecture. 

Using rough stone and shaping it into a work of art has been practised by many ancient societies, and the durability of the material has allowed us, millions of years later, to take a peek into their unique culture and artistic practises. 

During the Stone Age, many used this material to make little figurative carvings, which began appearing across Europe from around 30,000 BCE. Since their creators were always on the move, the works were made on a small scale, in order for them to be easily transported. These richly coloured portable figurines often depicted humans gaining control over natural elements and animals &#; the latter were used predominantly for rituals that were carried out before a hunt. Fertility was another popular theme, as it represented prosperity and expansion of the tribe, which is why many Venus figurines were created at that time.  One of the most famous stone structures in England is the historical landmark Stonehenge, in Wiltshire. The monument consists of a ring of standing stones, each around 13 feet high, seven feet wide and weighing around 25 tons. It was built in several stages: the first monument was an early henge monument, built about 5,000 years ago, and the unique stone circle was erected in the late Neolithic period about BC. Two types of stone were used: enormous sarsen stones - a type of silcrete rock, which is found scattered naturally across southern England, and smaller &#;bluestones&#; - these are of varied geology but all came from the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales, and they have a bluish tinge when freshly broken or wet. 
There are many theories about Stonehenge's original purpose &#; it may have been used as a meeting or celebration site, or even as an astronomical calendar. 

The peak of stone sculpting occurred during the period of Romanesque art, followed by the Gothic architecture period that gave birth the greatest collection of three-dimensional religious stone pieces ever seen in the history of sculpture.

A popular choice for sculptors for many centuries, stone is valued for its natural elegance, sturdy nature, and versatility. As it is relatively easy to obtain and carve, it opens up a wide range of possibilities as it can be rough-hewn or delicately polished. 

Different types of stone were used in different regions as sculptors used materials that were available nearby. A variety of limestone was employed all over Europe, and alabaster was popular in England, northern France, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain. Marble was commonly used in Italy, and exported to northern Europe from about onwards. Whether working in igneous, mineral, sedimentary, metamorphic or semi-precious stones, the end result varies. The softer the stone, the easier it is to work with. While soapstone is the softest one and is commonly used by students of stone carving, the hardest and most durable is igneous rock, formed by the cooling of molten rock, and includes granite, diorite, and basalt. Stones such as alabaster, limestone, sandstone or marble occupy the middle part of the spectrum.

The tools used for stone-carving have largely remained unchanged since antiquity. A mason&#;s axe cuts out the basic form of the sculpture. This is further shaped or roughed out using picks, points and punches struck by a hammer or mallet. Different sizes of tool are used throughout the carving process to achieve different effects. Roughing-out tools leave deep, uneven grooves, whereas flat chisels achieve finer results and are used for finishing the surface of sandstone, limestone and marble.  Further smoothing is achieved using rasps or rifflers (metal tools with rough surfaces), or minerals such as sand or emery (stone grit). Polishes can then be applied to fine-grained stone after it has been abraded. Marble and alabaster are polished with pumice, producing a smooth, translucent and reflective surface. They can also be left partially unpolished to create different textures.

The 20th century completely reconsidered, redefined and reworked the concept of sculpture by introducing abstraction, and this brought new approaches to working in stone. Constantin Brancusi introduced the process of direct carving in , where he would carve directly into the stone without carefully working out a preliminary model - usually made of plaster or modelling clay - beforehand. This practise was soon adopted by other established artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore (illustrated above). Despite similar tools being used to make stone sculpture today, we can also see a development in the making of stone work with the use of power tools and technology. 

This beautiful marble sculpture was one of the highlights of &#;Divine Principles&#;, an exhibition by Zachary Eastwood-Bloom for the culmination of his year as Pangolin London's Sculptor in Residence in . His work explores the intersection of the physical and immaterial, the historical and the cutting-edge, referencing classical imagery and adopting digital aesthetics to create his work. &#;Venus Celestis&#; is a combination of the mythological figure, the personification of the planet and the surface of the planet itself. With this sculpture the philosophy of the ancient Greek is brought up to date by using exquisite CNC milling techniques.

Sculpture in stone gives a peculiar sense of grounding. Stone of all hues and textures have been carved into different shapes and forms over time. Chunks of dunite, marble and sodalite are re-imagined as figures, globes and other abstract forms in the sculptures below.