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Monumental: A Stonemason's Tale
Around the world and across time, the buildings of the gods and royalty have mostly been made...
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Around the world and across time, the buildings of the gods and royalty have mostly been made of stone. For more than forty years, the eminent stonemason and conservator Simon Warrack has worked on many of the greatest of them. In Monumental, Warrack takes readers on a charming journey to some of the most extraordinary places where he has plied his trade, including the dazzling churches and palaces of Venice and the celebrated fountains of Rome, the vast temple of Angkor Wat in modern-day Cambodia, the glorious arches and cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral in England, and the ancient, elaborately carved Obelisk of Axum in modern-day Ethiopia.
Everywhere he goes, Warrack finds a communality through stone--a shared desire to conserve and maintain heritage that has spanned continents, cultures, religions, and millennia. He captures the joys and the challenges of working with various kinds of stone--marble, granite, limestone, sandstone, travertine. He describes stonecutters' tools and techniques as they've been passed down through centuries, and the sheer wonder of working so intimately on monuments to human ingenuity and divine belief. And he approaches his work with the passionate belief that conservators must be guided by the spirit with which people built, carved, and cared for their monuments. Without this, form and beauty may endure, but their spirit is lost.
Monumental is a thrilling account of historic conservation at the level of chisel and stone, and a powerful argument for safeguarding our shared history.
Author: Simon Warrack
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 09/08/2026
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.29h x 6.32w x 1.29d
ISBN: 9781324075981
Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/08/2026
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2026
About the Author
Warrack, Simon: - Simon Warrack received a degree in Renaissance history before becoming a stonemason in the 1980s. He attended the Building Crafts Training School in London and the UNESCO Stone Conservation Course in Venice. He lives in Italy. This is his first book.
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