Stone Textures - Weekly Task

This week's ident task was to find, photograph and identify 5 different natural stone finishes to compile on a presented poster in Sus-tech studio. Fortunately, I was in London this weekend which gave me ample opportunity to record interesting and high quality masonry. 

From left to right, the first chosen texture is fluting. Also known as reeding, the technique takes the form of a series of regular, concave grooves or convex ridges running vertically or spirally along a surface. While iconic in relation to classical fluted columns, the original primary purpose of fluting was originally structural. Adding strength while reducing material weight. However, its role has evolved, becoming more ornamental in nature. I believe the stone pictured is Portland stone due to its location adjoining the Kings Collage Somerset House Campus on the Strand. Another example of fluted Portland stone is the Great Fire of London Memorial Monument.

The second texture is from the decorative corner detailing on the Afghanistan Embassy Building, just off Hyde Park. While sadly covered with paint, the textural finish of the stone is an example of vermiculated rustication. In the context of architecture, rustication is a masonry technique most famous for its use during the 16th-century Italian Renaissance where roughly-cut stones contrast with smooth, squared-block masonry, creating contrasts and textures in the surface. Among the different types of rustication, vermiculation is one of the most interesting. Stemming from the Latin vermiculus or 'little worm', it is where dense worm-like patterns are carved into the stone. It contrasts with smooth, squared-block masonry known as ashlar. The visible face of each individual block is cut back around the edges to make its size and placement very clear.

The central texture is an example of bush hammering. The random rough weathered texture is achieved with a tool similar to a meet tenderiser, and the created surface is highly textured when underlit as the image shows. Due to the location in Covent Garden, I believe the stone is granite quarried from Cairngall (now Aberdeenshire)

The more subtle ribbed texture is another example of bush hammering, this time with the intent to pattern. The vertical pattern has naturally weathered to a subtle linear pattern, adding soft character to quite a plane surface.

The final texture is an example of a highly polished natural stone surface. Located in the new
Evolution Garden at The Natural History Museum in London. Most of the stone for the garden was provided by CED. With the total budget for the project exceeding 25 million GBP the photographed surface is part of the chalk meadow section in the garden. The surface itself is polished flinted chalk and was included in reference to the White Cliffs of Dover, with much of Sothern England sitting on a bedrock of chalk. Chalk as a material is a pure white limestone, formed from the remains of small marine organisms that lived and died in the clear warm seas that covered much of Britain around 70 to 100 million years ago. While flint is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of quartz, meaning it's made of silica. Flint is considered to have begun forming soon after the deposition of Chalk. Stone is now polished mechanically, using granite and other surfaced polishing pads a fabricator can progressively smooth out the surface of the material until the desired shiny finish is achieved.