Well said Tim.

On 5/26/2011 5:29 AM, Tim W wrote:

"Mike wrote in message
...
Tim W wrote:


It is quite a piece of work. TBH I don't think anyone could build it
again now, not for any money, not for any number of suits with
clipboards and laptops, Not unless you started by growing the trees
while you trained carpenters from boyhood.


Indeed - quite a piece of work. Could not be built again now? Bull.
It's nice to romanticise the artisans of the past and fool ourselves into
believing that they are somehow different fromn the artisans of today- if
that's what really makes you feel good. But... it's just not true. So -
let's throw this over into your court and ask you just exactly how you
feel these older artisans were so much better empowered to produce so
works of art?


It isn't an argument which goes 'can be done'/'can't be done'. If the Irish
put a bomb in it or it caught fire it would be rebuilt. There is no question
that it can be rebuilt but also that it can never be rebuilt the same as it
was. What I am saying is that the work is so big, so elaborate and so
totally medieval and 'of it's time' that no amount of money and technology
could rebuild it so that it was really like the old one.

You might say you could make it look the same. That would be easy.
Lightweight steel roof, polystyrene rafters, PU trusses and purlins, get
Robatoy to carve the angels with his CNC thing, spay it up with latex to a
good oaky brown.... It would look fine but it would just be Disneyland.

You might say you want it rebuilt out of oak and you could do that too. I
see from Zz,s link that Stirling Castle has a new oak roof:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ha...ing_Castle.jpg
But I can tell you that it isn't going to be the same. You might get an
expert in medieval carpentry to produce a fine detailed set of drawings, but
every architect, engineer, contractor and accountant on the job will have
ideas about how to strengthen, improve, fireproof, reduce weight, cut costs,
simplify, alter invisibly and adapt for efficient production. The thing will
be full of epoxy glue joins and stainless rigging screws and all those
moulding which were subtley different on each truss will be made the same,
and where the thickness of each cleft wedge had been different because a boy
had made each one to fit, now they would be run off identical 200 at a time.
Then you would come to the artistic side of the carvings, and faking
artworks is a whole other field.

So maybe you have a massive budget and strict instructions to rebuild
exactly as it was. You rob every cathedral in Europe of all the craftsmen
who have spent years repairing medieval oak roofs and you scour the country
for 500 yr old oak trees which survived the devastation caused by building
the Royal Navy in the 1700s, and then where are you going to start? You
can't cut those trees in a sawmill because they can't be too square and most
of them are curved, better dig a sawpit in the forest and appoint a master
sawyer to decide how much out of true is acceptable. Then deliver the timber
to the carpenters, don't let them use tape measures or any electric tools.
They will have to get the smiths to make a set of adzes to rough out those
mouldings then a set of gouges and maybe a plane or two before they start...

...do you see what I am getting at? You may as well set up a guild system
and settle in for an eighty year project because it probably took eighty
years to build in the 14th century and the only way of doing it the same is
to do it all the same. It's not that the people are different or that the
skills are even lost, it's because a building the is the product of the
society that made it. we can't make it the same because we don't have the
same economy or the same society but also we don't have the same attitudes,
the same sense of common purpose, the same calling to build for the glory of
God or the King, the same humility to labour with patience... all these
things are lost and can't be reproduced.

Maybe I have gone on a bit lol.

Tim W




--
Jack
You Can't Fix Stupid, but You Can Vote it Out!
http://jbstein.com