The Craft Of The Picapedrer

In Pollensa there is a street called Picapedrer. It is on the industrial estate. There are other streets in Majorca with similar names and they are typically to be found on industrial estates. The Son Castelló estate in Palma has a Gremi Picapedrers.

In 1379, ordinance in Barcelona officially established the picapedrer trade. It was integrated into the guild (gremi) of millers. A few years later, the first separate guilds started to appear in Catalonia. The picapedrer - stonemason or stonecutter - had become established as part of mediaeval industry.

At the exhibition of Guillem Bestard photographs in Pollensa there are several which are dedicated to trades of the early twentieth century, such as espardenyers (makers of espadrilles), cosidores (sewers), mestres d'aixa (master shipwrights). There is a group of picapedrers as well. They were of course not unique to Pollensa. Stoneworkers of different kinds were in abundance across the island, whether they were involved, for instance, with dry stone, quarrying or intricate design.

These old trades and crafts survive to varying degrees. The espardenyer is the most threatened. In the municipality of Consell alone there were once, in 1928, ten workshops employing 92 men, and there were women as well; they worked from home. Inca, Petra, Selva, Maria de la Salut, Sant Joan, Sencelles, Sineu and Soller; they all had espardenyers as well. A few years ago it was reckoned that there was only one left in Majorca. The industrial process had made the traditional craftsman redundant. Espadrilles or espardenyes are standard forms of footwear in Majorca, but the demand has required a move away from a one-time cottage industry.

The picapedrer has enjoyed a more productive fate. Stonemasonry, cutting, sculpture and decoration all have their place. Original work, restoration, public buildings, private residences; the picapedrer is in demand. The stone fair in Binissalem this weekend is linked to this craft, albeit the fair is more about what is made from stone rather than the essence of the picapedrer, which is the decorative embellishment and typically to buildings as opposed to products.

In Catalonia, where it officially all began, there is a fair each May - the Fira dels Picapedrers in Castellfollit de la Roca. Perhaps they should think about having a similar fair in Majorca, where there is currently strong political initiative for promoting traditional artisan skills and trades and where there are also celebrated stoneworkers from history, none more so than Josep Gelabert.

He was born in Palma in 1621. His father was in the trade. At the age of 23, he became a master of it and was to become pre-eminent in defining Majorcan architectural art in the seventeenth century. This art had first been set in stone (so to speak) way back in the time of Jaume I in the thirteenth century. A form of legal regulation determined the work of the picapedrer. It applied to archways, to doorways, to window frames, to domes and so on.

Gelabert included this in a manuscript entitled De l'Art de Picapedrer, which appeared in May 1653. He added numerous drawings to indicate elements of the craft. It was, if you like, a manual, which systematised how stonework was to be done. Up until this point there had been an arbitrariness which neglected certain rules, not least those which Jaume I had contemplated and that were supposed to have been followed in lands under the Crown of Aragon.

It was an extraordinarily detailed manual, which took account not only of the crafting of decorative shapes - be these circular, rectangular, square or whatever - but also building design and construction. In this respect Gelabert went beyond the brief of a picapedrer, with his decorative elements being conceived with an eye towards what might be described as urban planning - distances between buildings, the need for light and views, for instance.

Gelabert was to be highly influential in defining Palma's urban landscape. City gates, convents, the town hall; they came to bear his mark. He might have been more influential had he lived longer. At the age of 45 he fell from a building and was killed.

Back to list