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Natural stone is used as architectural stone (construction, flooring, cladding, counter tops, curbing, etc.) and as raw block and monument stone for the funerary trade. Natural stone is also used in custom stone engraving. The engraved stone can be either decorative or functional. Natural memorial stones are used as natural burial markers.
Scottish charm-stones are typically large smooth rounded pieces of rock crystal or other forms of quartz. They were credited with healing or quasi-magical powers, often through water that the charmstone had been dipped into, which was considered efficacious against various ills of both humans and farm animals.
The hardest stone frequently carved is granite, at about 8 on the Mohs scale. It is the most durable of sculptural stones and, correspondingly, an extremely difficult stone to work. [2] Basalt columns, being even harder than the granite, are less frequently carved. This stone takes on a beautiful black appearance when polished.
Ashlar (/ ˈ æ ʃ l ər /) is a cut and dressed stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. [1] Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, and is generally rectangular . It was described by Vitruvius as opus isodomum or trapezoidal.
A menhir (/ ˈ m ɛ n h ɪər /; [1] from Brittonic languages: maen or men, "stone" and hir or hîr, "long" [2]), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large upright stone, emplaced in the ground by humans, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be found individually as monoliths, or as part of a group of similar ...
Carved stone balls are petrospheres dated from the late Neolithic, to possibly as late as the Iron Age, mainly found in Scotland, but also elsewhere in Britain and Ireland. They are usually round and rarely oval, and of fairly uniform size at around 2 + 3 ⁄ 4 inches or 7 cm across, with anything between 3 and 160 protruding knobs on the surface.
A sett, also known as a block or Belgian block, [1] is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used in paving roads and walkways. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Formerly in widespread use, particularly on steeper streets because setts provided horses' hooves with better grip than a smooth surface, they are now encountered more usually as decorative stone paving in ...
Illustration to Serlio, rusticated doorway of the type now called a Gibbs surround, 1537. Although rustication is known from a few buildings of Greek and Roman antiquity, for example Rome's Porta Maggiore, the method first became popular during the Renaissance, when the stone work of lower floors and sometimes entire facades of buildings were finished in this manner. [4]