ACTIVITY
Francisco Rodríguez Remiseiro has for over twenty years been engaged in artisanal woodwork and stonework. In his workshop, cabinet-making, carpentry, wood sculpture and stonecraft are combined.
He has built a whole range of structures with wood: animal-driven noria waterwheels, roof frames, exterior carpentry, etc. With stone… he has explored every process in the trade, from quarrying to the dressing of ashlar blocks with manual tools such as picks and mattocks, building of ashlar walls and dry stonework, or carving of capitals and mouldings. At the same time he has produced sculptures and artistic stonework.
His out-of-the-ordinary creations include animal-driven norias (or “Persian wheels” or “saqiyas”). The most widespread model of noria in the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands consists of an “aerial” wheel, installed horizontally, meshing with a studded vertical or “water” wheel, fitted with a continuous chain of buckets. The building process starts with the design of the wheel rims, made of wedge-shaped segments. These are marked with meshing points which are then mortised to accommodate the studs or teeth. The rims are also chiselled with slots to hold the structure linking each axle to its wheel. These parts must be rugged and precise in manufacture so as to withstand stress and wear. Those most exposed to wear are fitted in such a way that they can easily be dismantled and replaced. Several woods are used in making norias, depending on the region concerned: cypress, acacia, oak, chestnut, olive or ash. Finally, with the assembly in place over the well mouth, the “water” wheel is fitted with ropes to which earthenware buckets are secured for discharging water to the collection trough. Some parts of these wheels needing squaring and shaping cannot easily be machined, so a lot of assembly and fitting work is done with manual tools. Thus the use of machinery is confined to cutting and planing.
TRAINING
Francisco Rodríguez Remiseiro received official vocational training in woodwork in the late eighties, when courses gave priority to craft skills and know-how and machinery was used only in the latter years of training.
The second stage of Francisco’s education, which he sees as the most important… one, was non-academic. Disappointed with his early experience of work in a conventional carpentry workshop, he chose to explore traditional woodwork, to which he has been devoted since then.
He also studied traditional musical instrument-making at the People’s University of Vigo in 1999-2004.
Further to woodwork, he has been in contact with stonework since an early age, as his grandfather was a stonemason.
TEACHING
In 2012 he tutored the work placements of two students at the Mestre Mateo Craft School (Santiago de Compostela), and he has taught wood carving and sculpture to an apprentice.
SELECTED WORK
His more unusual work notably includes the building of an animal-drawn noria in 2005 in the municipal open-air ethnographic museum of Allariz (province of Ourense).
In 2010 he made a noria of the 10th-century Hispano-Arabic type in Morón de la Frontera (Seville province), also executed with… the technical rigour of the models of old.
Replicas of capitals and other architectural elements in the restoration of the Sanctuary of Lourdes (France), in collaboration with the firm Mármoles y Granitos Vilar de Santos (Ourense).
Carving of four granite coats of arms for Military HQ in A Coruña
Dressed masonry walls in several projects for enlarging or rebuilding traditional houses in Galicia, building of retaining walls and masonry stairways, etc.
