Here’s another view of the tight radius, from the inside. Not quite a spiral staircase, but still tight and fairly detailed in terms of structure and placement. Unlike a spiral staircase though, there’s ample room to land a foot on each tread, an important aspect for a heavily used set of steps.

This is the sketch I made to help guide me through the layout, so that I hit the top of the block wall in the proper alignment. I spent a couple of hours moving pixel-stones around on the screen, trying different configurations to get the right arc. So far, reality is lining up with the design quite nicely.

Sandstone steps and wall buried in snow. Looks positively comfortable right now. Click the image for a larger view.

Last Friday I led an hour long workshop for craftspeople and artisans on how to market their work. It was part of Handmade in America’s Art, Craft and Design Expo at the North Carolina Arboretum. The main push of my talk was that marketing is education and that craft artists should focus their marketing efforts on the 3 P’s: product, process and person. I also talked a bit about setting goals, making a cohesive plan and punk rock.

Here’s the scene at the entrance to the Rock Hill horse farm. The connecting wall will top out at about 28 inches, so there’s a bit more to go. The far column has some sample caps resting in place. Columns of this volume might require a massive cap to help visually anchor them. That decision hasn’t been made yet…

Here’s a front-on view of the mailbox vault shortly after completion. I’m very partial to this style: structural quoins, solid stone lintels, serious gravity. It’s a mix of old school and new style. My conservative estimate puts each column weighing over two tons.

This is a plan from my tiny notebook that I eventually scrapped, in favor of thinner stones for the quoins, adding an extra pair of stones in order to make full height. I worried that at almost 7″ thick, the quoins as drawn would be out of scale to the rest of the work.

Detail looking down the quoins.

This North Fence Lizard spent the night resting in a nook in one the block I used for my low scaffolding. It was a very safe place until I started work in the morning. I had to move him because he was too cold to move himself. His tail is obviously shortened, perhaps by a predator, perhaps by not being careful enough around the stone pile.

I have been tying for a while now to get a good panorama of this project. It’s in a very tight space and I can only get a small bit of it in each image. Yesterday, while wandering around taking pictures with Steve, I got the best panoramic view of it I’ve done so far. Click the image for a larger view.