00:08hi everyone we're gonna get started uh
00:11this is stone carver Nick Benson coming
00:15from the john stephen schap excellent
00:18thanks guys thanks a lot so here is the
00:24John Stevens job it's a funny little
00:26stone carving shop at Newport Rhode
00:27Island it's the kind of place you'd
00:28drive right by probably wouldn't even
00:30give it a second look but in a nutshell
00:33what we do is we use a broad edge brush
00:36to paint lettering on paper which we
00:40then transfer to stone and we use
00:42mallets and chisels to carve that
00:44lettering into stone and commissions can
00:48be as simple as a single character on a
00:50single piece of stone or it can be
00:52thousands and thousands of characters in
00:54architectural context or in this case
00:56this is the Martin Luther King memorial
00:58down in Washington DC but often times
01:02people look at this stuff when they say
01:04we what on earth are you doing spending
01:07all of this time drawing lettering by
01:09hand and pecking away with a mallet and
01:11chisel when this is the world that we
01:13live in I mean there are thousands of
01:15fonts that we can access through this
01:17machine and we can connect this machine
01:19to other machines that will laser etch
01:23inscriptions of the stone diamond
01:25drought inscriptions into stone why go
01:27the route of of the old school and it
01:31has a lot to do with this man this is my
01:33my young dapper grandfather john howard
01:36benson he was an artist he was a painter
01:39he was a printmaker he had really really
01:44great graphic sensibilities and when he
01:48was done with his education here in New
01:50York City he went to the Art Students
01:51League he got back to Newport Rhode
01:53Island and he's like what how am I gonna
01:54do with my life and he found the john
01:57stephen schap sort of on its last legs
01:59and he thought you know i can bring my
02:02art education to the monument industry
02:05and i'm going to make monuments the way
02:08i want to make them he always loved the
02:10old colonial stones up the street at the
02:12kind of burying ground and he understood
02:15that although most people look these
02:17things and think you know they're really
02:19naive funky crude pieces of work key
02:22that they were very complicated
02:25sophisticated unique pieces of design
02:29all of the subtle iconography and the
02:33letter form were sort of uninspired by
02:36other work because it was the colonial
02:38era and so these guys were making all
02:39this stuff up the actual physical
02:42process of carving letters with the
02:45mallet and chisel informed these letters
02:48they were not typographic in any way
02:50this is really vernacular stuff and so
02:52even though you look at the the funny
02:56short Center stroke of the E in memory
02:59or you look at the way the ampersand is
03:01cocked between marne abyss and Lydia
03:03when you look at the whole thing it has
03:05a really wonderful symmetry to it look
03:07at all of the A's and Barnabas how
03:09beautiful those things are so while my
03:12grandfather's contemplating all of this
03:14stuff of course the system this is the
03:161920s and the modern world is pressing
03:19forward and mass production is the way
03:21of the world this is the way we're going
03:23the handmade is out and everything
03:25mechanical is in and the same was true
03:29for the type of graphic world type was
03:32being produced mechanically now and sort
03:36of modernist movement as evidence in the
03:39Bauhaus was really the direction that
03:41everything was going here's Paul
03:43Renner's future this is the
03:45quintessential piece of sans-serif
03:48modernist type where the hand is
03:50completely erased and you have this
03:52super super clean form every single
03:56character is precisely the same it's all
03:59about mechanical perfection so the same
04:02type of thing was happening in the
04:03monument trade this is this really cool
04:05little sample that the John Baskerville
04:07actually designed and carved himself
04:09most of you guys might know a
04:11Baskerville typeface well this was made
04:14by John Baskerville and this sort of
04:18typographic interpretation of things in
04:23the monument trade started imprinting
04:24itself on gravestones so this starts to
04:28end up looking a lot more like a
04:29broadside or a book plate than it does
04:36really really interesting dynamic
04:38vernacular stuff of the earlier days and
04:41this sort of went on and became sort of
04:43a caricature of itself almost a
04:45cartoonish version of this typographic
04:47stuff the ornamental work became really
04:50naturalistic and then the lettering you
04:52look at the lettering on this stone it
04:53looks like it's made of lead or
04:55something it's it's really really really
04:56mechanical and completely and utterly
04:58out of sync with the ornamental work
05:00even the process of carving letters into
05:03stone became mechanical so on the on the
05:06left hand side here you have a hand cut
05:07v cut letter that was hand-drawn and on
05:11the right side you've got a sandblasted
05:14character and Sam blasting is a process
05:17where you put a rubber mat on stone and
05:19then you cut out a piece of the
05:22lettering represents the lettering cut
05:24that rubber out you blasts and under
05:26high pressure air at the stone and it
05:28itches the material you pull away the
05:31rubber and there's your incised letter
05:34not particularly sensitive and this is
05:38the state of monuments that have been
05:40designed with the machine and produced
05:43with the machine not exactly warm and
05:45fuzzy so my grandfather said screw that
05:48i'm throwing all that stuff out the
05:49window I'm just gonna start and use the
05:53basic principles that the colonial guys
05:55did and make my own stones so here's an
05:58early piece that he did which is an
06:01obvious fly to the colonial stuff but
06:03when you look at the ornamental work you
06:05look really closely at this stuff along
06:07the borders all along here and up in the
06:09tympanum family has a lot more to do
06:12with art nouveau than it does with all
06:13that really really funky a bizarre sort
06:16of quirky stuff that the colonial guys
06:19are doing and then the inscription
06:20itself has obvious ties to typographic
06:23standards so this becomes this sort of
06:25strange thing that's entirely its own
06:27really you could say it's innovative
06:31here's another stone that he did that
06:33you know completely dropping all of the
06:36connection to colonial stones he did
06:37this very slight peak top but he's
06:40moving further and further in the
06:42direction of a sort of contemporary
06:43interpretation of monumental work he was
06:50in and he started looking back at
06:51historic forms to help inform design
06:54moving forward let him to Rome or he was
06:57looking at Imperial Roman capital
06:59letters and understanding the way in
07:01which the Romans laid out their texts
07:04and then he was looking at Carolingian
07:07minuscule of the 11th century which is
07:09basically the beginning of lowercase
07:11letter in as we understand it and he was
07:15looking at italic forms from the 15th
07:17century and then he injected all of this
07:21stuff into lettering that was entirely
07:23his own so this is an alphabet stone
07:26that incorporates all of those
07:27influences but it's really cohesive it's
07:30really dynamic and it's a badass piece
07:33of work telling you so here's as he went
07:37down the Roman Road this is a gravestone
07:40that he done that I threw in here
07:41because I really really love it it's
07:42it's something that has immediate ties
07:45to the to the basic concepts of Roman
07:48layout but nobody's going to confuse
07:50that confuse that for a Roman peace it
07:52is entirely its own thing here's a
07:56absolutely stunning tablet that he did
07:57over at the Met again the same type of
08:00thing just the dynamic quality of it is
08:04is just so so beautiful to me one of the
08:06things that's so inspiring to me when I
08:08look at my grandfather's work so my dad
08:10when he took over the shop in 1963 what
08:14happened is the type of graphic stuff
08:15sort of got more and more refined and
08:17there were calligraphers and designers
08:20guys like William Addison dwiggins and
08:22Rudolph caulk and the late great
08:26Herrmann's off these guys were coming in
08:28and they were injecting a whole bunch of
08:29new life into the typographic standard
08:31and my dad was inspired by that and he
08:35used the same tools that my grandfather
08:37was using he was using a broad edge
08:38brush but he tweaked his lettering to
08:42become almost typographically perfect in
08:45a way it was like super super super
08:46refined and it reached this this this
08:50pinnacle of perfection but at the same
08:53time it had all of this very subtle
08:56idiosyncrasy that it made it human so in
08:59this particular piece when you look at
09:03in represent tarde down on the third
09:05line the first e in the second e you can
09:07see that the bowl in the first e is a
09:09little bit smaller than the bowl in the
09:11second e do you see that this is the
09:13kind of thing that I'm talking about
09:14very very subtle inconsistencies without
09:16within this thing that that we almost
09:19subconsciously pick up on and it ties
09:21right into the humanity that we connect
09:24with this thing this is not a mechanical
09:26piece of work then along comes the
09:29computer in my dad's Nagant in the 80s
09:32we're screwed here's the computer your
09:35life as a letter is over and I love the
09:38fact that there's Adobe illustrators the
09:40first thing on the computer and she
09:42loved that hello goodbye so uh he saw
09:46the computer as really what he should
09:50have been looking at a tool he saw it as
09:52a tool and he said you know what I'm
09:53gonna use this thing and this was right
09:55when he got the Commission for the
09:56Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial down
09:57in Washington DC and he designed a
09:59site-specific typeface to use in
10:02conjunction with hand-cut lettering down
10:05there that he drew by hand and he really
10:07really again this is a big leap in terms
10:10of innovation of him saying hey man this
10:12is a really really great tool that's
10:14going to help me make something that i
10:16can use in this in this large
10:18architectural context so this is some of
10:20the inscriptional work that's on the way
10:21heading into the memorial that he drew
10:24by hand on this very very wild and a
10:27crazy surface and then here's a panel
10:30where he was using the site specific
10:32type face and the two really really
10:34worked beautifully in conjunction so
10:38here's Little Nicky Benson at age four
10:40in the backyard of the John Stevens shop
10:43like totally and utterly clueless as to
10:45what was going on around me there's
10:47there's a sample the sample I'm standing
10:49from is for the Franklin Delano girls
10:51I'm sorry for the John F Kennedy
10:52Memorial in arlington cemetery and it
10:55wasn't until I went away to college that
10:57I had enough perspective on this an
11:00objective view of the shop to realize
11:02hey that place is pretty cool I think
11:04I'm going to get involved with this so I
11:08went on to to do a long-term
11:11apprenticeship with my dad where he'd be
11:13out of me and you know like yo you're
11:16doing it wrong you're
11:16you got to do this and and I ended up
11:19sort of once I get out on my own start
11:21producing work that was in the shop vain
11:23I was oftentimes heavily influenced by
11:25my grandfather so in this piece there's
11:27a very stylized approach and a sort of
11:29classical approach to the inscription
11:30that has direct connections to my my
11:33grandfather's approach and this piece is
11:35a lot more like my dad's where it's a
11:37sort of naturalistic sailboat and a much
11:39more simple piece of text I also took on
11:45a lot of the large monumental stuff like
11:48my dad so this is the national world war
11:50two memorial in washington DC and just
11:52to walk you guys through a little bit of
11:53the process of site-specific typeface
11:55design what i ended up doing for that
11:58particular job is I brushed out big
12:01bodies of the text that I would end up
12:03carving on that and then I made copious
12:06notes about what I was brushing like no
12:08that's too thick that's too thin i like
12:10the look of the bowl of the are here you
12:12know the stroke of the NS this way
12:13and then once i scanned these characters
12:16into the Machine and started tweaking
12:18them in an illustrator I really got a
12:21sense of what I wanted to do now when
12:24you look at this particular image you
12:26see that that are that's a pretty
12:28heavyweight character you know black on
12:31a white screen this thing looks like
12:33some sort of blunderbuss Roman it's
12:35really really heavy but I'm making
12:37conscious decisions in this design
12:39process that have everything to do with
12:41the way the form is going to look once
12:42it's carved so it's very very very
12:45different it does not actually function
12:47typographically it's meant to be carved
12:49in stone it's a lapidary letter so
12:52here's the typeface as a whole again it
12:54gives you a really great sense of how
12:55heavy this thing looks black on a white
12:57page but once it's carved you really get
13:01a much much better sense of how it was
13:02designed ideally for this purpose this
13:07is the Franklin Delano Roosevelt four
13:09freedoms park memorial over on Roosevelt
13:11Island I don't know if any of you guys
13:12have been out there it's a really really
13:14cool spot it's the architect Louie
13:17Khan's last design that he did before he
13:19died and it's a you know modernist
13:23monumental piece of architecture that's
13:26so so contemporary a lot of people are
13:28thinking well what do you
13:30talking about hand carving letters for a
13:32Louis Kahn piece that's really doesn't
13:34make a lot of sense so here's the sort
13:38of contemplative granite room at the
13:39very tip of the park and this the block
13:42that you see in the center of the
13:43photograph there is where we had to
13:45design and carve the central inscription
13:48so I ended up designing a letter that
13:51was meant to be very sort of
13:53contemporary sans-serif clean but it had
13:56this really really really subtle sweep
13:58to the stroke that I knew would
13:59translate well once we carved it into
14:02stone here's the layout that I did I
14:05made really broad line spacing sort of
14:07played on this idea of the horizon that
14:09con wove throughout the whole memorial
14:12sort of a crappy photo but we got on
14:15that wall we carved for about a month or
14:17so and there's the there's the
14:19inscription and when you get up close to
14:22and you actually put a hand on it that's
14:24the other thing about this it becomes a
14:25real tactical tactile experience for a
14:28lot of people kids in particular they
14:29run up to these things they put their
14:31hands on and they feel them they want to
14:33they want to be invested in these these
14:35letters that have been carved into stone
14:36and this has a again a really really
14:39human feel for something that is sort of
14:42at its heart contemporary so I continue
14:47to go on and make these gravestones and
14:49I will and make dedicatory tablets and
14:52enlarged architectural inscriptions but
14:55I'm heading down a funny rabbit hole of
14:59design that's inspired by this machine
15:02not in terms of of the way in which i
15:05use this machine as a tool to design but
15:07in terms of the flood of information
15:10that it represents now I mean I was
15:12looking at this CNN page and if this
15:15were 25 years ago and you made this as a
15:17poster and you put it up in a crit
15:20people would tear it they would say this
15:23is the worst piece of design i've ever
15:25seen but we understand that every single
15:29piece of this page leads to an entirely
15:31different realm of information right and
15:34i use this because it's a real like
15:37sledgehammer over the head in terms of
15:38being inundated with information sure
15:40it's it's Times Square and of course
15:42we're in dated that way
15:43this sort of mentality is ejected itself
15:45into the monument trained I mean this is
15:48like you know Lorenzo Lamas and Kevin
15:51Costner in the background there is
15:52really really awful awful stuff but
15:57really it's this it's this idea of the
16:00mass of information that's being that's
16:02being beamed across the world at all
16:05times and that's influx of information
16:09the way in which often times it's
16:11totally and utterly indecipherable and
16:13it just represents this wave of
16:15information that we have to kind of deal
16:18with in cope with and we do is we all
16:21have our specialized way of dealing with
16:22with all sorts of information but
16:24oftentimes we do step back and say Dan
16:27this is a lot to take in so early on i
16:31started making interwoven bodies of
16:33texts that were definitely along the
16:37lines of the historic precedence in
16:39calligraphic form this is at Alec
16:41capital lettering but it's all woven
16:43together into a slightly sort of
16:45confusing body of text and I went
16:50further and further down this road this
16:52is actually a piece of rope lorem ipsum
16:54in laura myths and his filler text the
16:56graphic designers use and it is in Latin
17:00and everything about this is the sort of
17:04flip side of what I do with the John
17:06Stevens shop on a day-to-day basis what
17:08we do daily is we we are hired by the
17:11client to convey a certain piece of
17:12information and we conveying of that
17:14information is is is paramount you have
17:18to understand the information
17:19immediately and the aesthetic is
17:20secondary this is the flip side
17:22aesthetic is what you get hit over the
17:23head with first and then you have to
17:25contemplate the information this is a
17:29really wacky piece that I did recently
17:31that I can't even talk about okay so
17:34this one is I started thinking more and
17:38more about sort of mathematics and
17:40things and this is peter higgs the
17:43physicists mathematical formula for the
17:46standard model of the universe so I saw
17:50on netflix i saw the the film all about
17:54the large hadron collider over there
17:57it got me so cranked up about this
17:59notion of again all of this information
18:00so I saw this this piece of mathematics
18:04and I thought oh man i'm going to do a
18:05calligraphic version of that and then
18:09again this is this is steps in process I
18:11do an outline drawing of the calligraphy
18:13that I've done and then I very very very
18:16carefully and maniacally carve it into
18:18stone with a mallet and chisel so
18:20there's this crazy sort of immediacy of
18:22the really really loose calligraphic
18:24form but when you get up to it you see
18:26that I've spent hundreds of hours
18:28carving with a mallet and chisel really
18:30really precisely this whole thing and
18:33I'm not entirely sure where this is
18:35going to lead me but I find it a really
18:37really interesting experiment and I'm
18:40sure going to do a whole lot more of it
18:42so that's it thanks so much thank you
