TELEPHONE:
ADDRESS:
Calle Buzón 60 – 07518 Lloret de Vistalegre
ACTIVITY
Lluc Mir (Palma de Mallorca, 1977) is a master marger dry-stone waller and stonemason who continues the age-old Mallorcan tradition of stone-building. He is an expert in construction with dry stone both in restoration and in new projects, with over twenty years’ experience attesting to… the quality of his work.
He runs a stonemasonry firm specialised in dry stone, restoration of heritage stonework and landscaping projects featuring stone. This involves building retaining walls, two-sided dry-stone walls, stone paving of all kinds, huts, lime kilns, stone arches, vaults, etc.
His passion for stonework has led him to explore and develop his trade, extending the offering of stonemasonry: stone cladding of facades, restoration and building of stone walls with lime mortar, solid stone pavings, antique paving slabs, stone arches and vaults, design and creation of basins and fountains, sculptural features, mortars, etc.
In 2016, with four other seasoned marger wall-builders, he founded the Mallorcan Dry-Stone Wallers’ Guild (Gremi de Margers de Mallorca), an association of stonework practitioners intended to protect the traditional trade of marger, upholding good practice and excellence in the craft and showing that it remains very much alive in Mallorca, with uninterrupted generational transmission over the centuries. Lluc currently chairs the guild.
He was also part of the expert group that drew up a professional qualification for dry-stone building at national level through the Ministry of Education’s National Qualification Institute, the Balearic Government Department of Education and the Mallorca Island Council.
TRAINING
First year of a Fine Arts degree at the Faculty of Sant Carles, Valencia Polytechnic University.
Training at the Mallorca Island Council Stone-Wallers’ School in 1998-2000, where he learned the basic techniques of the dry-stone waller’s trade with two master stoneworkers. He carried on working with… various specialist master wallers until he attained journeyman status, and since 2002 he has run his own firm.
He supplemented his training in stonemasonry at the Artifex Balear school, studying carving and sculpture, stone stereotomy and restoration.
Twenty years’ experience in stonemasonry together with his inclination for learning, research and sharing knowledge have led him to continue expanding his expertise.
TEACHING
A devotee of traditional building and advocate of the dry-stone technique, Lluc has taken part as a specialist instructor in various workshops in the field: in Deià, Mallorca, in 2007, with Artifex; in Ventura, California, in 2011, with The Stone Foundation, and in Deià in… 2017 with the Mallorcan Dry-Stone Wallers’ Guild. He has also taken part in international conferences on building with stone, giving talks on dry-stone heritage, of which the latest was at a conference sponsored by the Yale University Global Consortium for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage held in Bombay in 2018.
As a member of The Stone Foundation he has taught Mallorcan dry-stone techniques to many US students visiting the island for the purpose, from 2007 to the present.
SELECTED WORK
– Stone Garden project: Cecilia Bartoli’s home in Zurich, Switzerland. Transformation of a rocky slope into a three-tier terraced garden with ramps, steps, retaining walls, vaults and fountains, transferring the Mallorcan dry-stone technique, adapted to the local sandstone, to Zurich.
– Cyclopean Wall project: Andrew Lloyd… Webber’s home in Deià, Mallorca. Building of a dry-stone wall of precisely fitted boulders in keeping with the local walling style.
– Santuari de Gràcia project, Mallorca. Construction of a wall of large dry stones with a corner and a retaining wall in tribute to the Japanese ishigaki walls of dry stone over a convexly curved embankment.
– Restoration of dry-stone heritage in the Tramuntana mountains, UNESCO World Heritage.
– “L’Obra d’un Gegant”, 2011: documentary showing the work of a group of marger wallers in the Mallorcan Tramuntana mountains, which has 20,000 km of dry-stone walls built over centuries, stone by stone.
