TELEPHONE:
ADDRESS:
Calle Ramón Calvera, s/n – 22360 Labuerda
ACTIVITY
Carlos Serrano does stonemasonry in an artisanal way, using traditional tools and the materials to be found in the vicinity of each worksite.
He seeks to reproduce the techniques, forms and materials that he encounters locally, although he says this is increasingly difficult, as few people… able to teach such things remain and so the artisan builder himself has to explore them by trial and error.
He has restored arches from just a few original voussoirs as well as reconstructing voussoirs damaged as a result of the top of an arch being cut off.
The stone in the area where he works is chiefly a tough, highly carbonated sandstone, with hardness and density similar to that of granite. This is found in formations with alternating layers of rock and soil of varying thicknesses. Another rock that he has worked is floresta sandstone. He sources blocks at the quarry and progressively splits them with wedges to obtain a piece of a size similar to that of the object to be crafted.
The tools he uses are traditional points, chisels and chasers, with manual mallets or pneumatic hammers.
TRAINING
He started out by doing maintenance work for the town council of Labuerda, and in 1992-94 he took various training courses funded by the FOREM foundation: welding, smithing, metal joinery and stonework. In the latter discipline he took courses given by Paco Puyuelo, allowing him… to acquire tools and to continue experimenting by himself, taking the local built structures and their details as models and seeking to replicate them.
In 2001 he left the town hall and began working independently in construction, specialising in stonemasonry.
SELECTED WORK
– Reconstruction of an arch from three surviving voussoirs at a house in Tierrantona.
– Restoration of the entrance to Casa Mur in Aluján. The top of the original arch had been cut off to make room for a balcony over the doorway. The broken stones… were replaced and in the keystone a coat of arms from a piece of furniture in the house was reproduced.
– Reconstruction of a machicolation at the Palace of Formigales.
– Gargoyle at El Pueyo de Araguás.
– Rostrum in the Church of La Asunción in Aínsa. The capitals are replicas of existing ones in the crypt.
– Fountain in the municipality of Fanlo.
