Josep Fuentes Riera is a specialist artisan with more than 30 years’ experience of building and restoring dry-stone walls. He makes retaining, hillside, terrace and free-standing walls as well as other stone features such as arches. He also masters other traditional building techniques, such as… adobe and rammed-earth walls or mud and lime render. His passion for his trade has led him to work all over the Balearic Islands. This has allowed him to build up great expertise in dry-stone walling, for different techniques are used on each island, such as polygonal or honeycomb stonework on Mallorca, herringbone masonry on Ibiza or goatherd’s paret on Formentera, with protruding slabs in the top course to prevent goats from climbing over.

The first step in building a dry-stone wall is to stake out its route. A brace is then set up. The stones are selected by size and used by grade, with larger ones in the bottom courses and smaller ones higher up. There can be various capping layers, such as side-on capstones, humpback or half-round coping, etc.

The tools he uses include various steel hammers, round mallets, punches, cold chisels, tooth chisels, etc.

Josep also teaches roof-building with cane, seagrass, ash, lime and mud. This technique is a tradition on Ibiza and Formentera and its peculiarity lies in waterproofing with seagrass, which after a desalting process of exposure to the elements is mixed with ash, thereby acquiring the required properties.