Stonemason and metalworker · Western Australia
Built by hand.Built tooutlast us.
Stone set by eye. Iron drawn by fire.
Walls, arches and ironwork made the slow way, for gardens meant to last a great deal longer than we do.
See the work →Stonemasonry
Dry stone walls, pointed arches, piers and garden structures laid one piece at a time in local granite and reclaimed brick.
Enter the stonework →Metalwork
Gates, brackets, latches and sculpture forged and fitted by hand, built to weather honestly and still work in fifty years.
Enter the ironwork →Selected works
Piecesstanding today.
Nothing staged and nothing borrowed. Every photograph on this site is work that went up in a real garden and is still there.
The hand behind the work
One pair of hands,two old trades.
I work in stone and iron, the two materials that built almost everything we still bother to keep. A wall goes up piece by piece, each stone read for weight and grain until it finds the one place it belongs. A gate goes into the fire, gets drawn out, hammered and fitted until it swings true and stays true.
Nothing here is bought in or bolted on. The old workshops moved freely between sculpture, building and engineering, and that is still the most honest way to work: beauty carried by sound construction, construction lifted by proportion.
Made to outlive us.
The stone already holds the shape. The work is learning how to let it out.
Nathan Fischer
How a piece takes form
From the first lineto the last joint.
- I
Read the site
Ground, light, drainage and whatever is already standing decide the first line, well before anything is cut.
- II
Choose the material
Local granite, reclaimed brick and salvaged jarrah, picked for colour, hardness and the job each piece has to do.
- III
Build it true
Laid and forged by eye, fitted on site, finished so it weathers into the garden instead of fighting it.
Close study
Materialbecomes gesture.
The detail is where the work either holds up or does not. Tool marks, fire scale, mortar joints and the small irregularities that tell you a hand was here.
