How to cut a stone

The Estate’s stone, from the ground it stands on.

A mason’s dusty hands holding a chisel and mallet against a block of pale stone.

Marès is soft enough to cut with a saw and strong enough to build a tower with. It’s a porous, shelly calcarenite, and it has built this island’s landmarks for centuries.

Two kinds stand on this Estate. The old stone was cut by hand. You can see the chisel in it, four hundred years later. The new stone was sawn by machine, in exact blocks of 80 by 40 cm, and the saw marks are still crisp.

Long worn voussoirs of a gate with visible chisel marks.
By hand, about 400 years ago.
Pale sawn stone with fine parallel saw marks and small fossil shells.
By saw, recently. Shell in the cut.

Where old stone is missing, we didn’t rebuild it to match. The new block sits 3 cm behind the old face, so a thin shadow always marks the repair.

Worn old stone meeting crisp new stone with a thin shadow line between.
The seam.

Lime gets the joints. The wall takes the weather. In a few hundred years, someone else can decide whether we got it right.

What’s real, and what isn’t

Sourced

  • Marès as a soft shelly calcarenite, used on Mallorcan landmark buildings

Invented

  • The Estate, its repairs, its 3 cm rule and its masons
  • Every photograph here, all AI-generated