Historical surfaces

Details

Created on Wednesday, 08 October 2008 13:03

Stone has changed the world and made the use of roads more universal (now they are used not only by pedestrians but also by different means of transport on wheels). The role of stone on the road was and in some places still is very important. It is usually associated with hard work, impossibility to change its location, and hardness.

These properties (hardness, immobility) can be observed in a particular way during the extraction and processing of stone. These characteristic features often caused problems which the road builders had to face. Road building sometimes meant violating the order of nature. Building a road on a hill-slope or building of a tunnel, working in quarries, breaking stones into pieces, transport of huge stone masses or large blocks make it all a real pain.

Stone symbolism is incredibly rich and is included in every religion since it is always a sign of something indestructible, eternal, but also stable. It is often a symbol of body, in contrast to the mobility of thoughts, desires and moods.

Stone found its place in towns and cities and became an important element as a building material, as a decoration of a building, as a symbol of commemoration (monuments, tomb stones), but also of a total destruction („not a stone was left standing”). Stone was used for hardening surfaces, both in a natural undressed form and in a dressed form as a pavement material. Surprisingly enough, in the stone symbolism there are also two forms of stone often mentioned: an undressed and dressed stone. The former one was a symbol of freedom whilst the latter was a symbol of slavery and darkness – the undressed one was a gift from heaven whereas the dressed one was done by a man depriving God's creation of its holliness.

• < Prev
• Next >