what it means to be a Stone Mason

To be a stone mason is to be part of something timeless. A craft, passed down through millennia, from the hands that built the Ziggurats in Mesopotamia, the Stepped Pyramids in Mesoamerica and Roman Mosaics, to the hands that built field stone walls in England, to the very hands creating similar structures today, those functional, ornate, or both.

We don’t get the glory or the glamour. Our feet are in the mud and our faces are in the dust. Hopefully with respiratory protection of some sort. The job takes as long as it takes and there might be more than one way to make it right, and many ways to make it wrong, but wrong or right—the truth of the quality of our work, for good or bad, is there. Right there, a solid, tangible reality.

Patience is what it's about, more than strength, more than skill. Patience. The rhythm of hefting a stone, trimming it with hammer, setting it in place and then hefting yet another. The determination and grit, as well as the care with which every stone is set, both of these connect you and your hands to all those who have came before, from the mason who taught you to the apprentices you teach, and to all the other workers of stone throughout time.

We create order from chaos. Structure from rubble. When my work is finished it is a clear and obvious thing, to myself at least, and to anyone else who knows my style: Devin was here. If you do the work yourself--you can insert your own name into that sentence. We take pride in our work, and that is good, we earned a right to feel some sense of personal accomplishment. But more importantly, we give love to our work. After I am gone, people will tread upon stones I’ve laid, will build fires within fireplaces I’ve built, will garden upon hills I have terraced.

Stone Masonry is a tradition older than we can say for certain. In a world of faster, easier, cheaper—we take the more difficult path, we do the more challenging work, because this is the how to create works which endure.

This is what it means to be a Stone Mason.

Thank You