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A story of determination and soul-searching... Compellingly narrated, entertaining and thought-provoking... treat yourself to a copy of this book and enjoy the journey Natural Stone Specialist
I say that we are taking this stone to Trondheim. I continue to tell her the story of Magnus and ancient Kings.
A beautiful memoir, travelogue, and meditation on stone and the transformative power of craft, by young stone mason Beatrice Searle. A story of dedication and tenacity that is deeply moving and utterly captivating. Stone Will Answer is a truly remarkable book, a beautifully crafted tale of an artist's extraordinary journey. Searle seamlessly contemplates the meaning of craft, ancient myths, the mutability of stone and the transformations within her own life. Its rare to read a story of such artistic integrity. I felt bereft when I finished but also buoyed by a new found fascination with stone and all its many meanings. Sally Huband, author of Sea Bean Searle wanted to learn the “lessons” stone had to teach her but it’s the human spirit that emerges triumphant in this sparky blend of memoir and travelogue. There is the kindness of strangers she meets on the pilgrim path: fellow travellers who share food, mend trolley-wheels and add their footsteps to the Orkney Boat’s story. There is wisdom to be gleaned from the stories Searle tells about her fellow stonemasons: highly skilled craftspeople who repair and preserve the fabric of ancient buildings using techniques that have remained unchanged for 800 years. I loved learning about the essence of stone, the craft of people who work with it and the impact that doing something different and brave can have upon our lives. All of this is intertwined with a fascinating travelogue type description of the pilgrimage with its challenges, traumas and moments of elation and triumph. Writer, artist and stonemason Beatrice Searle and artist and designer Ellie Orrell reflect on their work and the transformative and healing power of art and craft.
The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening. A stimulating and rewarding on-stage conversation; a lively informed and tolerant audience; privileged access to the great treasures of the Bodleian, and finally, wonderfully interesting dinner companions to help me conclude the best day I have enjoyed at any festival – anywhere. Searle’s rationale for her journey occupies several lengthy passages. It would help her become “embedded” in Orkney, a place “so inexplicable, so extraneous to me that it would be something of mine and mine only” “The combination of journey and stone had secrets to tell me.” There is speculation as to whether the soul’s weight can be calculable, and whether a 40kg stone might “feel like a perfect balance. Like health. Like freedom”.The book takes you not just on the authors pilgrimage journey but also into the journey of her life that led to the decision and drive to do something as brave and quirky as dragging a 40kg stone on a trolley over 500km through difficult Norwegian terrain.
It may sound a bit unlikely, but it is a story everyone can relate to because it unfolds as a metaphor for life, in which the hardest journeys can be the most rewarding. I thoroughly appreciate hearing her sharing this story and all the peculiar intricacies of a peculiarly intricate path. Stone does answer, in its own irregular ways and through its unlikely combination of oppositions. It is both the purpose of travel as well as anchor. It is both weight and lightness, surface and depth, stillness and motion. It is sometimes said that stonemasons have a ‘feel’ for stone. This is something that comes from practice, hours spent working it into specific useful shapes. What is less well known is that this is a two-way street: the stone works on you. Searle has taken this relationship out into the wild, tested it in extreme conditions and come to know, unknow and re-learn her stone, which has forced similar processes upon herself. As she concludes, ‘I had thought it was an act of generosity to bring the stone; in the end it was our encounters with those on the path that revealed that I had been seeking and making real my own foundation myths’.
Weaving between the joyful trusting determination of a singular intelligent and interested little girl, in her adulthood she draws her into this story so tenderly, whilst walking into the landscape of facing the peculiar monolithic impressions we live amongst. Storied impressions and whom we feel compelled to wield in the titanic efforts of believing in being human. As we learn with her what it takes, and all it takes along the way, to become a master of stone. She takes us all further, from ideas of faith in place into seeking for knowing, a travelling in the field... with her subject, evening the condition, and so showing her workings out on a mother of a walk in circling the mattering of life. Taking life, taking a stone. Returning life. Turning stones. Mattering. Roy Strong Interviewed by Richard Barber The Stuart Image: An Introduction to English Portraiture 1603 to 1649 Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event Searle is as much artist-adventurer as she is stonemason and it is the journey she undertakes from Orkney to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, that forms the basis of the book. This is no ordinary journey, however, as not only does she walk (and travel by boat) but takes a forty-kilogram stone with her which she pulls upon a custom-built trolley. This is no ordinary stone either but a ‘stippled, leopard-surfaced lozenge’ of Orcadian siltstone, ‘beamy in the hips like a true Yole, Orkney’s traditional clinker-built fishing boat’. The analogy with boats runs deep throughout the book, for the stone itself, into which she cuts two footprint depressions, is itself a kind of boat, the Orkney Boat. I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.
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