Magnificent Stones at the Center of Power: Stone Carvers and the Building of the Washington National Cathedral

M. Kenworthy Clift Andrus Seferlis February 22, 2010

Table of Contents

Statement of Purpose______1

Biography______2

Historical Contextualization______4 ―In the Center of Magnificence: The Stone Carvers and the Building of the Washington National Cathedral‖

Interview Transcription______14

Time Indexing Recording Log______63

Interview Analysis______64

Appendix______69

Works Consulted______71

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this Oral History interview and project is to gain a greater knowledge of the stone carvers role in building the Washington National Cathedral. In the interview Clift Seferlis, a stone carver, retells the stories and memories of his father,

Constantine Seferlis, a master sculptor and stone carver who worked at the National

Cathedral. Through the interview, one will have a greater understanding not only of the role of a stone carver, but of an immigrant who came from Greece to the United States.

Biography

Clift Andrus Seferlis was born on May 29, 1970 in Washington D.C. at Sibley

Memorial Hospital. He grew up in a house with his mother, father and brother in Chevy

Chase, Maryland. He attended the Beauvoir School on Mount St. Alban from Pre-K to third grade, then graduated and went to St. Albans Preparatory School for boys. At the same time he attended Beauvoir and St. Albans, both his parents worked on the Cathedral grounds. His father was a stone carver at the Washington National Cathedral and his mother taught at St. Albans School. He liked having both his parents close to him and has many memories of his father carving stone at the Cathedral. After graduating from high school, Seferlis attended Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he studied architectural history for three years. He transferred to New York University in

Manhattan for his senior year to study design.

After graduating from NYU in 1992, he returned to Washington D.C. to assist his father, Constantine Seferlis, at the Smithsonian. By then, Constantine had completed his work at the National Cathedral and was serving as an independent stone carver. Ever

since, C.A. Seferlis has worked at the Smithsonian restoring sculptures, gargoyles and other works of art. In addition to working at the Smithsonian, he volunteers at the

National Cathedral in a division called the Information Systems Program, which is a database for every artistic work in the Cathedral. He also serves as a private tour guide in

Washington D.C. and New York City for school groups. In his free time he enjoys traveling, cooking, taking photos, playing tennis, and being outdoors.

Magnificence in the Center of Power: The Stone Carvers and the Building of the Washington National Cathedral

One of the most recognizable landmarks on the Washington, D.C. skyline is the

Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, better known as the Washington National

Cathedral. It is one of the most well-known, visited, and appreciated Church buildings in the United States. In 1907, the cornerstone was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt. It would become the sixth largest cathedral in the world and took 83 years to build (Dyne

7). Although the Cathedral belongs to the Episcopal Church, it welcomes people of all faiths. Visitors of every faith and even no faith from all around the world are drawn by its size and magnificence. Every kind of craftsmen who participated in building the

Cathedral is truly praised for their eminent work toward the beautiful church. The stone carvers of the Cathedral were highly respected for their astonishing abilities of creating such master pieces. When one looks at the exterior of the Cathedral, what strikes the person is the magnificent structure and its beautiful stone carvings. When one enters, the carvings continue to capture the eye. To better understand the construction of the

National Cathedral, one must understand the crucial role of the stone carvers.

A cathedral is the seat of the bishop of a diocese and he or she is looked to as the seat of moral authority. Every diocese in the world requires a bishop, but a bishop does not necessarily sit in a grand cathedral. After the Civil War ended, a new diocese of

Washington was frequently talked about and Dr. Charles H. Hall, rector of the Church of the Epiphany, said, “This new diocese will and must be created, the idea of a Washington

Cathedral . . .springs from the need of man to praise and glorify God in all times and

places . . .in this instance, in the capital of a fast growing nation destined to lead the free world. What the classic dome means to the body politic, the Gothic tower means to the body ecclesiastical. Knowing this, men prepared to build” (Feller 4).

All the capital cities in Europe were anchored by a major cathedral, which usually served as a center for national ceremonies. The idea of the United States having such a major church goes back to the founding of Washington D.C. When the first Congress of the new United States was resolved in 1917 to create a capital city, “the men responsible for that city talked of a cathedral or great church” (Feller 3). The architect of the capital city, Pierre L‟Enfant, thought a church should be for “national purposes, such as public prayer, thanksgiving, funeral orations; and be assigned to the special use of no particular denomination or sect; but be equally open to all” (Feller 3). Soon after in 1792, Reverend

Thomas Claggett, Maryland‟s first Bishop, said the District of Columbia needed an

Episcopal church in the new Federal City (Feller 3). Many people discussed the possibility of a cathedral, planned by the Protestant Episcopal Church but free to all for worship (Feller 4). Bishop Satterlee, the first Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C.,

“thought that the Episcopal Church (was) peculiarly fitted to build a National Cathedral, because it combines in itself Protestant and Catholic tendencies” (“For National

Cathedral” 1). It took a century before a Cathedral would be built because the founding fathers were determined that Church and State should be separate. Bishop Satterlee stated, “It stands for the principle of irrevocable separation of Church and State, as it did in the earlier day . . . The Church, to be free, as the ancient Apostolic work was, must be untrammeled herself by any political influence” (“For National Cathedral” 1). Many

people did not want the government to have involvement with the Cathedral because it would defeat the purpose of a National Cathedral, free to all.

The National Cathedral is Episcopal because for one, the Episcopal denomination was dominant in the Washington area. In 1895, the Episcopal General Convention created the Diocese of Washington (Hewlett 38). Washington‟s first diocesan convention drafted Henry Yates Satterlee as Bishop in 1895 (Hewlett 42-43), who accepted in 1896

(Feller 5). The Episcopal Church now had the need, the drive, and the financial sources.

It also had the man with the energy to make the dream of a cathedral a reality.

The first Bishop of the diocese of Washington, Henry Yates Satterlee, set out to build a cathedral for the new diocese, but, more importantly, as a national Christian church because he felt the church could accomplish much more in unity than it could as separate denominations. Satterlee “was determined to give the new cathedral in Washington a national image around which the Episcopal Church and other Christian churches could unite in one national and worldwide mission” (Hewlett 65). A main reason why the

Cathedral was built was because people in the D.C area wanted a sacred space where they could worship. Simply because the nations cathedral was to be built in such a prominent place and with an implication as a national center, it took on political implications. The builders, however, were determined to keep the focus on worship. According to Richard

T. Feller and Marshall W. Fishwick, “The builders of the National Cathedral insisted that the High Altar [the table where the Eucharist is celebrated] should be the first thing that was built. This is the focal point – the reason for building the Cathedral as a place of worship” (Feller 27). Like most denominations, the Episcopal Church was self-centered, giving little value to other denominations and faiths. But as the Episcopal Church‟s

worldview expanded over the century, it has come to welcome people of all faiths.

Determining the location of the cathedral was not a huge issue because most people thought it should be constructed at the highest point in Washington, Mount Saint

Alban. It could have been placed in various regions in the D.C. area, but Mount St.

Alban was the most popular. Joseph Nourse, D.C.‟s first Registrar of the Treasury and a strong leader for building a Cathedral, “did not want the cathedral downtown, but on the hill overlooking the city – Mount Alban” (Feller 3). The Mount Saint Alban location was the most popular because of its geographical prominence and focus. In 1946, a

Washington Post article noted, “Because of the elevation of Mount St. Alban, the

Cathedral‟s crowning glory – its Central Tower – [would] rise more than 100 feet higher than the Potomac than the tip of the Washington Monument” (Tate).

Since there was already an Episcopal School, St. John‟s Church School, and St.

Albans Church (built with a gift from Nourse‟s great-granddaughter), Satterlee was determined to acquire the balance of Mount St. Alban for a Cathedral. When Joseph

Nourse‟s great granddaughter died in 1850, she left a box of 40 gold dollars, which she designated “FOR A FREE CHURCH ON ALBAN HILL” (Feller 3-4). This was the seed for a Cathedral fund. While the diocese owned part of Mount Alban, Satterlee needed to acquire the balance in order to build a cathedral. He persuaded wealthy individuals to give large amounts so the church could purchase the property, although some debt remained. Even as Saterlee worked to retire that debt, the diocese continued to raise large amounts to finance the Cathedral‟s construction. Saterlee was aware of the limited financial resources that were available in Washington and thought it would be

hard to build a cathedral that would fulfill his magnificent “vision of a great church with a national and even world mission” (Hewlett 65). In 1902, Saterlee stated, “I have to raise all the money. I am doing all I can for the sake of nationalizing the Cathedral and creating a general interest among our people” (Hewlett 129). Saterlee felt overwhelmed with everything else he was doing on top of creating this Cathedral. He was exhausted and felt no one was helping him. From Satterlee‟s Personal Record, he wrote, “Nine- tenths of the burden of my work as Bishop in the capital of the country would be lifted if the Cathedral debt were paid, but no one today, with such few exceptions as I have suggested, seems to feel any personal responsibility regarding this work of the Church”

(Hewlett, from Personal Record 129-130).

In December 1905, Satterlee wanted the Gothic style, and was sure that Gothic architecture was the most appealing to people for a great church building (Hewlett 74).

Gothic architecture originated in European countries and was first brought to the United

States to build the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City. Soon after, the National Cathedral would be built, however the style for the new cathedral was still a question in 1906. The representatives divided into two committees since they could not come to a consensus about the architectural design, being divided between advocates of Classic Renaissance and of Gothic style (Feller 15). Despite the fact that the architecture design was not publicly debated, the style was still uncertain in 1906 (Feller

15). The Board of trustees unanimously voted for Gothic on May 21, 1906 (Feller 15).

Webster‟s New World Dictionary defines “Gothic” as a “type of fiction that uses remote gloomy settings and a sinister atmosphere to suggest mystery” (Webster‟s

Dictionary). As many may know, the Gothic cathedral was designed to lift the heart and

mind toward God. When one enters the National Cathedral the very first thing visitors do is look up and absorb its magnificence. Gothic architecture has been around since “the re-building of the Parisian Abbey of St. Denis in 1130” (Feller 2). After St. Denis was completed, Gothic design became popular and many cathedrals were being built all across France. There is a major difference in the construction and design of a Gothic cathedral and a Romanesque cathedral. A Gothic cathedral is different in that it has “a skeleton of shafts and ribs; a conception of space and composition. Wherever piers, ribs, capitals, and tracery meet there is a burst of ornament. Small features give scale and majesty to large ones. Variation and surprise prevail. The unexpected can and must happen. Light is fractured and colored to create mystery” (Feller 34). The Gothic design was very popular in the Middle Ages and “was one of the few international styles

Western man ever evolved and surely, all things considered, the most impressive” (Feller

2).

In June 1906, a meeting was held to plan the choosing of architects. Satterlee chose the committee of Dr. Harding, Dr. D.C Gilman, and Dr. Rives to work with him on the difficult task (Hewlett 150). After the committee agreed that the design was to be

Gothic, they agreed to hire both an English and American architect. Bishop Satterlee went to England while Dr. D.C. Gilman and Dr. Rives searched in the U.S. In the course of visiting many cathedrals to observe Gothic architecture, Bishop Satterrlee became aware of George F. Bodley and strongly appreciated his work. He was convinced “that a man with Bodley‟s training, talents, and theories was ideal for a Washington Cathedral”

(Feller 16). Meanwhile, the American search group found Henry Vaughan, a native of

England living and working in Boston. It was quoted in the book, For Thy Great Glory,

“If Vaughan spoke softly, his buildings sang out gloriously. He worked slowly, but the quality of his work was uniformly high” (Feller 17). On October 10, 1906, the two men were chosen as the architects (Hewlett 152). Bodley drew up the original plans;

Vaughan‟s task was to “interpret, inspect, and refine the work done here in America”

(Feller 17). Mr. Bodley died in October, 1907, leaving Vaughan to execute their vision.

Ten years later, Vaughan died in June, 1917 (Feller 20). After the two highly respected architects died, the Boston firm of Frohman, Robb, and Little was designated as the

Cathedral architects, with Philip Hubert Frohman taking the principal role until 1971

(Feller 139). Subsequently, the Cathedral has had only superintending architects since the design had been completed in 1971.

Feller states in his book, For Thy Great Glory, “The Gothic architect determines first on his drawing board which stones he wishes to be carved . . . .They are called capitals, label mould terminations, drip mould terminations, corbels, bosses, crockets, finials, dentils, and other such terms” (Feller 39). With Feller‟s knowledge of Gothic architecture, he states, “In the best Gothic tradition, water spurts through the mouths of gargoyles (root word gargle) when it rains and chimaeras cavort in nooks and crannies”

(Feller 42). The distinctive characteristics of Gothic architecture are rib vaulting, pointed arches, flying buttresses, and large windows. The distinctive decorative elements include gargoyles, grotesques, saints, keystones, bosses, and stained glass windows. Gothic cathedrals have always reflected changes in style over the course of their long construction, and the National Cathedral is no different. Although the overall style is

Gothic, there are many modern decorative elements. Some of the modern elements include the Darth Vader gargoyle, a raccoon, a girl with pigtails and braces, and a man

with large teeth and an umbrella (“Darth Vader” 1). When the visitor enters the

Cathedral, she is initially absorbed by the Gothic design, but as she observes more closely, modern elements become apparent.

A Gothic cathedral requires multiple kinds of highly skilled craftsmen. Metal workers crafted the doors, gates, and window frames. Glass artisans created colorful imagery in stained glass windows. Stone masons hewed the stone blocks for the walls, the piers, vaulting, and flying buttresses. The woodworkers created the decorative wood elements including altars, rood screens to separate the chancel from the nave, and choir stalls. Among the most admired craftsmen were the stone carvers. While every artisan involved in the construction and decoration of a cathedral is of great importance, stone carvers‟ work tends to catch and hold the visitor‟s eye. Perhaps it is the delicacy of the work coming out of something so solid and heavy as stone or marble that mesmerizes the viewer. Marjorie Hunt, author of The Stone Carvers wrote, “Stone carvers see themselves as performers, as creative individuals engaged in the skillful act of interpretation . . . [T]hey transform designs on paper or in clay into lasting works in stone” (Hunt 97). The vast majority of stone carvers came from Italy, Greece, Germany, and some from the U.S. The men were categorized into their specialized work, so figurative carvers crafted saints, politicians, angels, biblical figures, and gargoyles while decorative carvers did the bosses, keystones, tracery, flowers, birds, and animals.

According to a master stone carver, “Family and community tradition played a key role in the recruitment of traditional stone carvers, but it was in the small world of the carving workshop – in close interaction with master carvers, journeymen, and apprentices – that the carvers systematically acquired their skills and knowledge, their standards of

workmanship and their aesthetic values” (Hunt 39). Men who immigrated brought their skill to America. They either came to the U.S because of recruitment to work on the

Cathedral or they wanted a better paying job than what they had in their home country.

“Stone cutters were the highest paid in the building trade and obtained good benefits. . . and at the turn of the century carvers were paid as well as doctors or lawyers” (Arnold 1).

Stone carvers were very particular in what kind of materials they used. There was a wide variety of materials from which they could choose. Low quality materials create a disadvantage for the stone carver because “it [is] difficult to achieve a high degree of control over technique and thwarting the craftsman‟s best intentions and efforts” (Hunt

104). The stone carver has to feel comfortable with his tools because if he is content with them then an excellent piece of artwork ultimately could not be produced. Once the carver feels comfortable with his tools, he rarely replaces them with new ones. The principal tools that were used were wooden mallets and steel hammers, used for roughing the sculpture from the stone. Tools such as chisels, pitching tools, and air hammers were often passed down to stone carvers from friends and colleagues. Some of the tools had names or initials inscribed on the inside, which gave them character and a story (Hunt

107). Over time the tools improved thus, “replacing the wooden mallet and steel hammer for much of the carving process” (Hunt 114). The air hammer made cutting the large pieces more precise and required less muscle. To visualize the process of creating a sculpture, one might compare it to getting a coffin (the stone block), opening it to reveal the bulky wrapped mummy (roughing the stone), cutting away the wrappings to reveal the body (chiseling the details), and giving life to the work (the finishing tools).

Originally, carvers worked from the sculptor‟s small clay or plaster model and then had

to make calculations to the scale of the Cathedral. Over time, the sculptors began to make their models true to size, eliminating this step.

Highly skilled craftsmen made the dream of a National Cathedral a reality. They brought their historic traditional methods to build one of the greatest Cathedrals of the world. When construction of the Cathedral was finally finished in 1990, the question was

„how will we give these stones life?‟ (Kenworthy). In other words, now that it is completed, how will this space be creatively and fully used by the Episcopal Church and those who are appointed and charged to oversee its mission and ministry? The current dean of the Cathedral, Samuel Lloyd, answered that question in Living Stones: “Our new century will have us building „a spiritual house,‟ a house made of the living stones of people worshiping, praying, studying, living the Christian faith, embodying Christ‟s love in this city and beyond” (Lloyd III, et al, 3). From an historical perspective, the

Cathedral website notes, “Since the celebrated moment in 1907 when workmen laid the foundation stone of Washington National Cathedral, the majestic structure has played a vital role in our nation‟s history. The Cathedral has long served as a grand spiritual center where Americans unite to worship and pray, mourn the passing of world leaders, and confront the pressing moral and social issues of the day” (“Mission” 1).

Building the great National Cathedral required the best visions, minds, skills and gifts of many people. Its construction not only required architects, stone masons and carvers, but also stained glass artisans, wood workers, iron and steel workers, and many more. Although not all of the craftsmen and tradesmen could see the completion of the

Cathedral, they are part of a living legacy and are linked to the presence and work of the

Washington National Cathedral.

Interview Transcription

Interviewee/Narrator: Clift Andrus Seferlis Interviewer: Margaret Kenworthy Location: Rare Book Library at the National Cathedral, Washington D.C. Date: January 3, 2010 This interview was reviewed and edited by Clift Andrus Seferlis

Margaret Kenworthy: This is Margaret Kenworthy and I am interviewing Clift Andrus

Seferlis as part of the American Century Oral History Project. This interview is taking place at 2:00 in the afternoon on January 3, 2010 at the Washington National Cathedral in

Washington D.C. Mr. Seferlis, you are a son of a very prominent stone carver,

Constantine Seferlis, who served as a master craftsman during the construction of the

Washington National Cathedral. My first question is can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Clift Andrus Seferlis: Yes, I essentially grew up here on the grounds of the Cathedral starting by going to Beauvoir Elementary School when I was four and then graduating through St. Albans School, a boys school affiliated with the Cathedral. So, I‘ve spent a considerable portion of my life here. As a young kid ‗till the age of nine, I would actually watch my dad do work here at the Cathedral, where he was a sculptor and a stone carver working on various carvings in and around the Cathedral; gargoyles, grotesques, and everything in between. And today I‘m a volunteer here; I work in a division called the Information Systems Program, which is a database of all the artistic works in the building.

MK: All right, that‘s nice.

MK: So what was it like growing up in the D.C area in the 1970‘s and 80‘s, right?

CAS: It was strange; obviously when you‘re a kid you don‘t pay too much attention to what‘s going on around you. It was a very interesting decade or two, but because my dad did not have a quote, unquote ‗Washington job,‘ my perspective or my outlook on D.C. was a little different from most of the kids I went to school with who were the sons of, let‘s say, politicians or attorneys or other sort of higher officials, if you want to call them that and there my dad being a stone carver on the Cathedral. So they both did equally important things, just in very different fields. So it was a little strange to grow up that way.

MK: I think that would be really cool though, saying like, ‗Oh my dad‘s a stone carver at the Cathedral, just right here!‘

CAS: Yeah, if you want to find him, he‘s on scaffolding outside working on a gargoyle of a donkey (both laugh). So that‘s your normal day . . . ‗What‘d you do today?‘ ‗Carved a donkey.‘

MK: That‘s so cool.

CAS: Yeah, very different way to grow up.

MK: How did the fact that your father was an immigrant stone carver impact your childhood? Did it at all?

CAS: It impacted me because it gave you a perspective of (coughs) appreciating things that are different. You appreciate different people, you appreciate different cultures, you realize that you are an American, but you‘re not really an American because your parent is not even an American citizen. He was always a permanent resident; he was never an

American citizen. The Greek Orthodox church across from the Cathedral, St. Sofia‘s

Parish Church, so we had a close affiliation with that. So I kinda grew up understanding well the influence of the Greek as well as the Greek Church, which is integral to the life of the Greeks here in D.C.

MK: Oh, ok. Wow. So when did your dad start working at the Cathedral?

CAS: He started here in 1959 to 1960 was the year he came here. I would say by the spring of 1960, he was pretty much on board. Before that he was working as a carver on the east front of the U.S. Capitol Building on Capitol Hill. If you look at pictures from

40 plus years ago, they actually redid the entire facade, the east facade, the portico view of the Capitol building and he was in charge of carving capitals, and marble columns for that restoration project. And then before that he was working as a carver at the National

Shrine—the big Catholic Church on the grounds of Catholic University. So he went from

Shrine to Capitol to Cathedral and with him came a lot of the carvers who he was working with at those various locations.

MK: Oh, ok.

CAS: So they all sort of traveled as a team together.

MK: Is that what most of them did a lot? Travel as a team and not individually.

CAS: They were. . .Some of them had individual commissions, some of them were doing work for big government projects, but at that time if you go back 40 to 50 years, there was so much work to be done in Washington that the bands of carvers would pretty much stick together and there was almost like a union of them, and they would have like in the old days – in the 30‘s, the Supreme Court, the Department of Commerce building on the Federal triangle and then you‘d move to the next project and the next project. But to get anything done large scale, you need to have an assembly of carvers to get it done on time, and that‘s the way they went from one to the other. They finished up at the

Shrine then came the next phase of the Capitol, then came the next phase of the

Cathedral, so they were always kinda looking ahead. There were plenty of carvers around, but they definitely had to sorta keep their eye focus on what the next big thing was and that‘s the way they came here together as a team.

MK: From Greece.

CAS: He was the only one from Greece. He came here as an immigrant in 1957. He started in New York City at the request of a friend of his who had been in New York for about 20 years, and he said you should really come here to America to come and find work. So he started up there doing some private commissions, joined The Art Students

League which is on 58th Street in Midtown, and found out about a lot more work in

Washington; and so after a year in New York, he came down to D.C. and started his career here.

MK: Oh, wow. So he didn't come just because he wanted to, someone said you should come?

CAS: Right. A friend of his from Greece who he had known from his young adulthood recommended he come here, and he was already an instructor of art at the Horace Mann

School in Riverdale in the Bronx, so he was pretty familiar with the whole art scene in

New York, and so he said ‗come on over here there is a lot more work than in Greece.‘

There wasn't a lot going on in Greece at that point even though he graduated from the premiere school, which is the Academy of the Fine Arts. It didn't guarantee him work, and there was a lot more work coming on over here.

MK: Right, yeah.

CAS: So he left his family and came to the states and started a new career.

MK: How big was his family?

CAS: His family. Let‘s see, three brothers and being like a big fat Greek wedding, like from a big family with lots and lots of cousins, but the immediate family would be three brothers and his mother and father, and that‘s it.

MK: Yeah, wow, and were his brothers interested in stone carving?

CAS: No. One brother was an electrical engineer and the other one was an engineer after he was done being a farmer.

MK: Oh (laugh).

CAS: You‘re looking at very simple life in Greece. I mean, there were very . . .you know, not a lot of opportunity to work for the state or the government or you could do something on your own. Greece at that point was certainly not on par with any of the rest of Europe. I mean, not like Germany or France or England, they were leaps and bounds ahead. Greece was very much third tier if I could put it that way, and there wasn‘t much opportunity, so his engineer and then farmer brothers stayed in their respected careerism and my dad who exhibited talent so early came to the States and had no problem finding work immediately.

MK: Oh, so his dad came to the States.

CAS: No, his dad stayed in Greece. But they kinda said ‗Bon-voyage‘ in the boat and off he went in 1957. Took him about a week to come over here on the boat. He landed in New York and was immediately taken in by his friend who I talked about in Riverdale where he lived up in the Bronx.

MK: Oh, ok. Could you describe maybe the skills and gifts that are necessary to be a stone carver?

CAS: Patience. First and foremost. For example, my brother probably had much more natural talent than I did when it comes to carving but he had no patience, and I kinda plug a long and I can do it, and I enjoy it, and I‘m very into it, but I‘m also very, very patient, so I‘m not one of those people like my dad who could look at a block of stone, get a chisel, and within about 5 minutes have a form roughed out. It takes me a lot longer but because I give myself a lot longer I know I can get it done. You just need to have the time.

MK: Yeah, the time.

CAS: I would say natural talent plays into it considerably because you still have to keep the overall picture, you‘re dealing with a solid object and your mission is to make that

solid object something three dimensional that you can recognize, but for people who are naturally talented with art, it doesn‘t always translate to being a carver. Now, I‘m not sure if we‘ve gone through that yet or that‘s a different question, but a sculptor is somebody who creates a work from the beginning, usually using a sketch, like on a napkin or a piece of paper and then they take clay and they make that clay into a model and then at that point, in relation to let‘s say, the Cathedral, you take that clay model, you make a cast of it, which means you make it into plaster and then from plaster, you carve stone from the plaster model. So it‘s like a three step process from clay to plaster to stone and not everybody who is a sculptor is a stone carver and not everybody who is a carver is a sculptor. They‘re both artistic; they‘re just artistic in different mediums. So my dad was a carver and a sculptor which meant the gargoyles he carved may have been sculpted by him or may have been sculpted by somebody else, vice versa, he may have sculpted a gargoyle or a grotesque or a boss tone and then somebody else may have done that design.

MK: Right, ok.

CAS: So he could do both.

MK: So he did sculptures and he did carvings but maybe not all the time he would do the sculpture?

CAS: Right, not all the time. There were some people who were hired as sculptors only and there were people who were hired as carvers only and he was right in the middle, he did both. So he could do something from scratch. Sometimes he worked without the benefit of a model, I mean, sometimes he looked at something and said ‗I‘ll do this‘, and created it, let‘s say the model wasn‘t available or they had a time constraint and he would do it from imagination.

MK: Wow, and that‘s definitely harder, but he . . . .knew what he was doing.

CAS: He knew what he was doing and being a sculptor translating that into stone was a natural process because you could see and you knew the three dimensional . . . and you knew how to essentially execute something that would have been in clay in a much harder medium of stone.

MK: Mhmm.

CAS: So, you know, you take away one whole step in the process. You‘re not worrying about a model, you‘re going right to the finished product, but what you don‘t have is you don‘t have something to refer back to all the time and if its not, let‘s say, a portrait then you maybe don‘t need that. If it‘s a dog or a cat or some kind of fish from imagination that‘s easy but if it‘s otherwise it could be a little bit tough.

MK: So what about you?

CAS: I‘m much more of a carver than I am a sculptor; I enjoy sculpture. I worked on a book on sculpture these past few years, but I‘m much happier carving, but my real interest is doing restoration work – means taking something that would be, let‘s say, previously eroded or an unrecognizable form and carving it from scratch and making it better.

MK: Replacing, take it out and put it in.

CAS: Replace it, right. Does it to match the original, so when you look at it, you didn‘t know it was a new piece.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: And that, to me, is a form of sculpting. It‘s much more carving, but it‘s still creating and your template is an eroded piece of stone, lets say, that has a vine or some type of leaf design that you can‘t recognize anymore but if you‘re looking at a piece right down the way on a building you know that‘s what it should look like and you should do.

MK: Oh, ok.

CAS: So for me, the fascination is taking something, not really creating a model, but having an original piece next to it and then doing it again. I do that at the Smithsonian.

MK: Oh, the Smithsonian, ok.

CAS: Where I do stone carving and restoration and the Smithsonian is not the detail of the Cathedral at all. I mean, there‘s maybe a couple dozen of carving of detail, but the challenge is still there to have to create that from what was and that‘s kind of fun.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: And then monuments and private commissions. I‘ve done some in Georgetown, in Oak Hill Cemetery, Hillwood Museum, a couple people‘s houses just creating things they ask for. So it‘s good, it‘s not my 9-5, I wouldn‘t say I live off that, I mean, I love it when it comes in, but I am also not the most aggressive person to find that kind of work.

MK: Yeah (laugh).

CAS: I‘m not a good hustler.

MK: (laugh).

MK: Have you done anything on the Cathedral?

CAS: No, I am far too young to do anything on the Cathedral, and the Cathedral is a tricky situation because I‘m a volunteer here, so I‘m not on staff, but we can go wherever we want to because of the office that we have here, which is an information systems program, so my capacity here is as someone documenting work but not creating work.

The Cathedral now, since probably 15 years ago, has a team of carvers; they no longer have a sculptor in residence, which is a position they used to have. So the long in the short of it, to answer your question, is if I was to work at the Cathedral it would be on future projects like the carving of some of the angels on the east end of the building that were never carved or some of the boss stones in the arch transept that were never carved that we saw yesterday, but in terms of my growing up here, I was never old enough to do work here, no matter how good I may have been and part of that is the Cathedral was in a very different way financially and they really weren‘t doing much carving. There has not been a lot of carving done here since about 1990.

MK: Oh, when it was completed.

CAS: When they completed it, right. At that point they were going off of a sculptor in residence, Jay Hall Carpenter, and a carver Vincent Palumbo, who did most of the work on the western towers.

MK: Mhmm.

CAS: But that was it. Two people because they were still trying to fund the completion of the building and that didn‘t leave a lot of time for monies to be applied to carvings that needed to be finished of which there were about 30 years of work here left to do.

MK: Oh my gosh.

CAS: A lot of work to do here, so someday maybe. They were floating the idea of repairing and replacing the organ in the east end and if they do that, the mission would be to take out the entire instrument, which is almost 11,000 pipes. And if they do that that would leave the triforium level between the big windows and the floor open and at that point they could bring in scaffolding and carve all the angels of which there are ten on each side that of which have never been carved since the 1930s, and if that was the case I would jump on board in seconds!

MK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CAS: Hopefully, I‘d be accepted as a carver here. You never know though, because it‘s not up to me. Someday we‘ll see, but that‘s a 30 million dollar project and there‘s not that kind of money right now.

MK: Yeah, oh my gosh.

CAS: So, takes a lot of money.

MK: So everything kinda stopped about 1990.

CAS: 1990, when they finished the building everything stopped and then the issue came for preservation and for maintenance of which this is an extremely expensive building to maintain. I mean, thousands of dollars a day to keep it open and running.

MK: Oh my Gosh, I didn‘t even think of that, you don‘t think of that actually.

CAS: No, you don‘t think about it. I mean, heating this place and air conditioning this place on a given day, I mean, we get a bill per month for what our houses are, imagine getting a bill to air condition the Cathedral for the month of June.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: Ya know, that‘s 50,000 dollars or more, so.

MK: Is that our tax dollars?

CAS: No, not our tax dollars because it‘s all privately donated, everything we do here.

MK: What are some of your earlier memories of your father and his work on the

Cathedral?

CAS: I would say, well first of all, I am right now, I am living in the house where I grew up right out in Maryland and some of my earliest memories are watching him work in the studio, which is in our backyard. We have this studio that was built with cinder blocks and actual pieces of the Cathedral that were not used in the building.

MK: Oh, that‘s cool.

CAS: The roof is made of some of the crates made from England for the great choir; the mantle is some of the pieces of the roof that were never used because they never fit in.

So the whole place is very . . . It‘s an art studio and I remember being out there pretty much every weekend with him watching him do sculptures, animals, gargoyles, grotesques, boss stones, all kinds of stuff and I‘d be right there with him watching him do that. Then at the Cathedral because I was at Beauvoir, even in nursery school and my mom was working over at St. Albans, I would literally walk from school to the Cathedral to see Dad and then over to see Mom where she drived us home. In seeing Dad, and to further answer our question, he‘d be in the carver shed and the carver shed is now where the elevators of the parking garage are and so I remember going in there as a kid and hearing all the stone carvers clamoring away and making things and Dad was always one of the more quiet ones working off in the corner. He didn‘t say much, especially when at work. So I remember him working on a lot of interesting things. I remember being on scaffolding with him here outside and inside and the big thing that he liked to do was

when we would walk from school over to St. Albans because he would always have our lunch waiting with him and he would throw it down from the scaffolding.

MK: Oh, (laugh).

CAS: And the big game was to see if I could catch it, which we never did, so our lunch went all over the ground.

MK: Oh, (laugh).

CAS: Then we would go eat in the Bishop‘s Garden. So it was interesting being a kid not understanding any of it because you‘re a kid, ya know, ‗That‘s nice, there‘s Dad on the scaffolding,‘ but I remember being outside watching him work on gargoyles. I remember him being inside watching him work on the stones in the ceiling, the big boss stones, and it was so hot up there because you only have 4 months out of the year when you‘re not either dealing with the heat of the winter rising to the top or the heat of the summer, which is in the building no matter what.

MK: And how high is that?

CAS: 104 feet in the air, so he‘d be right up there at the ceiling and I‘d be right up there with ‗em and sweating and he‘d have dust in his eyes and he‘d be carving away and I mean, it was a very weird thing to grow up that way. So going back to your first

question, what was it like to grow up like that around here? It‘s weird knowing that you were witness, not part of, but you were kinda witness to somebody who made something with their hands which for the most part will be there long after we‘re gone

MK: Yeah.

CAS: It‘s a little weird to see that ‗cause you‘re kinda like, ‗My dad did that.‘

MK: Yeah, and that was right there.

CAS: And I was right there and I was this big (showing how tall with arm), but I remember it, I remember it was bigger than I was.

MK: (laugh).

CAS: Still is (both laugh), so.

MK: That‘s so amazing. If I was your age I would think that was like the coolest job.

CAS: Yeah, it‘s like, wow, look at that.

MK: So different.

CAS: It‘s a very different job.

MK: Mhmm, but actually I don‘t know if you said this but where did he learn to. . .

CAS: Well, when he was little, the first thing he made in terms of artistic achievement was he actually made a violin. He created a violin, I think it was olive wood and he was a teenager at that point, then he started whittling away with wood and started creating figures in olive wood that would be around the house. So he had natural talent at such an early age that by the time he was 16 or 17 he applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in

Athens, which is probably the equivalent of what would be Harvard for art in Greece

‗cause it‘s an academy. They only take about 13 students a year, so the competition was pretty tough. The tuition was 6 dollars so, it wasn‘t like you had a great expense, but you had it obviously being paid for by the state. And at that point, he kind of flew; he got a lot of training--fine art training, but he went as a sculptor. You don‘t really graduate as a carver there: you graduate as a sculptor, so his degree, which was a degree number; you don‘t get a masters or a bachelors. He got degree number, I think, 643 with a degree in sculpture and when he was in his junior year, the mayor of Athens commissioned him to do a piece for the city of Athens so at the age of 19 he had a public monument in the city of Athens as a student. So that kinda furthers the point of him being nurtured along correctly. He apprenticed with a gentleman when he was over there as a stone carver, but then did his sculpting on his own in studio and in classes like we‘d have here in

American Academy.

MK: Mhmm.

CAS: So it was pretty traditional, it was a lot more stringent over there ‗cause it was a

European tradition but then on the side he would be working in a Goodfellow studio in

Athens learning the trade of carving while still being a sculptor at school.

MK: Oh, ok yeah.

CAS: So, that‘s the way his talent was nurtured by working old school with an older gentleman who sorta plugged him a long like I did with him, and then he would get his academics and his studio time within a rigid setting of the academy and that was his formal training. So, when he came to the States. . . it didn't‘ really apply to the way we have it here like people will have bachelors or masters or something. Over there when you graduate from an academy, it‘s assumed you‘ve gone through rigorous training and it‘s the equivalent of a PHD here, if you wanna go for that. But there was no PHD; there was no thesis, or defense ‗cause it was art. You had to create, and obviously having a lot of work under his belt so early he was very prepared to find work here, which is why he came here.

MK: Did he ever think about coming here or was it the friend?

CAS: I think it was the friend because there was really only one or two distant relatives who had come before. They had been to Ellis Island, and they‘ve done the traditional

thing, but they didn‘t say ‗come on over‘ and I don‘t think it was really a choice for him early on. It‘s only after there wasn‘t a lot of work in Greece because Greece had been through a Civil War. Times were a little bit tough over there and there was just like everything else while immigrants come here, a lot more opportunity in America and specifically in Washington where they were building and building everything out of stone right and left.

MK: In Washington.

CAS: In Washington. I mean, a lot of places, but D.C., the epicenter, at least for a stone carver.

MK: Mhmm...yeah. And most of the immigrants were from Greece and...?

CAS: Greece and I would say that for the Cathedral, the guidebooks will always say or maybe guidebooks nowadays would say, it was done by the Italians and it‘s important to understand that in the old days, Italians made up the majority of the carvers from, let‘s say, the teens to the late 30‘s or 40‘s and then when he came here, it was kinda like the

U.N. We had some people from Hungary, some from Germany; some were from

Baltimore, England, Greece, a few Italians and then people thrown in between.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: So the carvers here from 1960 on was a big mix of people. Before that, it was pretty much a lot of Italians with a few Americans thrown in . . . carvers though.

Sculptors were Italian as well as American.

MK: Oh ok, ok.

CAS: Right.

MK: Why were most of them Italian?

CAS: Because I think the tradition in Italy goes back a thousand plus years for carving.

If you look at Italy and look at Greece the two are hand in hand, I mean, you can‘t have one without the other; obviously the Greeks came first in classical art and classical study.

The Romans, if we go back to antiquity, took that over but they weren‘t as refined as the

Greeks, they copied more stuff. But what most countries have, which a lot of the other countries in Europe don‘t have is they have materials that are so abundant and so rich it was a natural process to take what was in your backyard and carve it. So, the Italian marbles are superior to the Greek marbles. In their variety, the Greek marbles are pretty much more white in coloring; they‘re sort of standard. The Parthenon was made from something called pantelic marble, which is the hills outside of Athens, the Pantelic

Mountains, so they just quarry those. The Italians got marble from all over the world sort of in one place, which is their own country so you have reds, you have greens, and you have these beautiful colors that are not part of the same geographic and the same . . .

.strata in where Greece is. So the tradition started. . .and because of the patronage in Italy with the church, the call to make good art had been going on as long as the Papacy had been in Rome. You worked for God and that what the carvers did here. You didn‘t make much money here; you worked for the larger good.

MK: Mhmm, yeah right.

CAS: Ya know, your work is here forever.

MK: So, the Italians had more of a variety.

CAS: The Italians had more of a variety and the Italians had . . .

MK: Stone.

CAS: Yeah, the Greeks did not produce as much as the Italians because the Italians didn‘t have . . . the Greeks, didn‘t have the presence of the Vatican called for work we can‘t even touch. Remember Greece is an orthodox country and the Orthodox though having impressive buildings for churches, their real richness comes in mosaics, and that‘s where their strong point is, where the Italians with all the marbles would be carving, carving, and carving everywhere you go.

MK: Well, my next question, and I think you kind of already answered it but what is the difference between a stone carver and a stone mason?

CAS: Ok, well let me throw in stone carver and stone mason and then sculptor. Ok, remember a sculptor is somebody who starts from the very beginning. A stone carver is somebody who executes the work of the sculptor, so my dad was a carver, which means he would create a gargoyle, and he‘d carve the gargoyle and it was his show from start to finish. A stone mason by contrast, which sometimes guidebooks or other people who are doing a tour will say ‗oh the stone masons did the work here,‘ well they weren‘t stone masons. A stone mason by trade, if you think about it, the masons are responsible for the building of the building and the mason is just as skilled but not in the fine art in carving, they are in the fine art of building and you need a mason, a master mason to put this in together. Carvers decorate it and masons put it together. My dad was not a mason, he probably could‘ve ‗cause he watched the whole thing go up and learned a thing or two, but they are not interchangeable. Carvers and sculptors could be like my dad, but masons and carvers are not interchangeable, they do one specific thing: one decorates, one builds, and that‘s the way you go.

MK: So, when you tell people what you father‘s job was do you say stone carver or stone cutter?

CAS: I would say he was a stone carver and a stone sculptor.

MK: Ok.

CAS: I wouldn‘t say stone cutter because a stone cutter for the Cathedral would‘ve been a mason and most of the stone cutting would've been done in Indiana where it was quarried and then shipped here in blocks already predetermined for their shape and size.

MK: The limestone, Indiana limestone.

CAS: Right. Bedford Limestone.

MK: And was that the stone they used for the whole Cathedral?

CAS: Yup. Well, I mean, there were some granite from Massachusetts, some of the marble in the floor is from other parts of the country, but it‘s an American building. I mean, this is an American piece of work through and through.

MK: Mhmm.

CAS: Wood from Massachusetts, American Oak. Where we‘re standing in this room this (pointing to floor) comes from Virginia, this kind of slate, the marble upstairs is from

Tennessee on the floor, Indiana Limestone, I mean, it‘s American.

MK: Yeah (laugh) definitely is.

MK: So my next question is when one looks at the Cathedral from the outside or the inside it is clearly a building of stone, could you describe how such a massive undertaking unfolded and your father‘s part in it?

CAS: Ok, the massive undertaking started in the 20th century where the building was built because the bishop of Washington and his diocese was formed out of the Diocese of

Maryland ‗cause remember in the old days Washington used to be Maryland before D.C. became its own city. The Diocese of Maryland did not want the responsibility, which really meant the cost of building something so big because this is hundreds and millions of dollars to build this, if you can even say there‘s a price on it. So, they started by electing a bishop of Washington—a guy named Satterlee who was in charge of raising money for people of means to get this building built. With that, building comes with masons, stone carvers, sculptors, woodworkers, brick layers, concrete guys, engineers, electricians, anything you could imagine for something this big. And my dad fell into that 60 years, well no, about 55 years into the project, so from 1907 when the

Cornerstone was laid to 1990 that was the building period. His time here was ‘59, ‘60 to about ‘79, ‘80, so he was here for a good 20 years of that entire episode of construction.

So, 83 years to build, his time here was about 20 so that‘s where he plays into the whole history of it and from that he has about 300 to about 325 works in the building that he either sculpted or carved in that 20 year period. So, that‘s his contribution to this building and effort.

MK: And how many are there all together?

CAS: Total carvings?

MK: Yeah.

CAS: I would say 6,000 because you got to figure every surface is decorated, ya know, in the ceiling alone where we were yesterday there are 768 boss stones in the ceiling. He did probably 80 of those.

MK: And how long would one of those take?

CAS: Two to four weeks depending on the size, like the ones we were standing yesterday on top of one of those big ones. That would be a solid three weeks of carving and some of the archival pictures show people next to ‗em and it‘s bigger than they are.

It‘s like five and a half across and weighs three tons, so it‘s not small, you have to carve underneath there, a lot of work to do.

MK: Oh my Gosh. Yeah, I was going to ask you . . . I can‘t remember. (pause). Let‘s see. How much freedom did your father have in his work?

CAS: A lot more than people think. It‘s tricky because the way the Cathedral was set up, the head of the Cathedral is the bishop . . . the person in charge of decorating is the

dean, the person responsible for building the building was the dean, working with the guy named The Clerks of the Works, which was an office which was responsible for the literal construction of the building. The carvers and the sculptors were under the watch of the Clerk of the Works. The dean invariably had ultimate say because his say was the decoration of the building. As we learned yesterday with our little tour, the inside of the building was religious, I mean the whole building was religious, but the inside was specific to a scheme devised at the turn of the century in like 1900 by the architect and the first dean. So, for him he had to carve things that were already called for in the designs and in the drawings: Ascension to Heaven, The Last Supper, Visitation by the

Maji, I mean, those were things you couldn‘t have much freedom with in terms with the subject. When it came time for the exterior of the building, for gargoyles, grotesques or other contributions from people, there was a lot of freedom because remember it‘s through people that the building got built and with those people comes a donation and comes a story. So, he would work with a donor and let‘s say, as we heard yesterday that woman, Catherine Lee, who was the head mistress of the National Cathedral School for

Girls and when she found out that the head master at St. Albans got his Bulldog up there she‘s like ‗I want my dog up there.‘ So, you give a donation that furthers the construction along and her dog becomes a piece of the Cathedral forever. So that was the freedom he had as a sculptor and a carver and that masts itself in really funny ways. Like he would go to the dean‘s house when Dean Sayre was around and he‘d look at his dog and say, ‗Ok, I have to sculpt you‘ so the dog would sit there and he‘d have to do a sketch of the dog and then he‘d come back and carve the dog. So, that kind of freedom was the beauty of being a sculptor and a carver. If it was a carver, he‘d have to wait for the

model of that dog to come, if you know what I mean, so it would have to come first in the form of a sculpture ‗cause it was coming from life and then had to be carved in 3D by a carver. So there was a lot of freedom with his ability as an artist, first and foremost, to interpret what somebody wanted and then to carve it to perfection.

MK: Mhmm.

CAS: With the inside, the dean would say . . . here‘s an example. A gentleman named

Granville Carter from New York . . . 35 years ago had created a boss stone of the Last

Supper, which is going to be part of the Nicene Creed or all the boss stones in the ceiling going from the west to the east. When they were moving from the east to the west building, Granville Carter, who operated out of the studio in New York, had shipped the model down in plaster. One of the workers was taking the model up the stairs to the top of the area where they‘d be carving it in place and dropped it.

MK: Oh no...

CAS: So the whole thing went to the ground and broke into a million pieces. Well, remember this is on a pretty tight schedule for the Cathedral because you had dates and dedications, and people donating and people to be memorialized, and commemorated so .

. . My dad was like ‗Ok that‘s fine,‘ so he created the Last Supper from imagination . .

.and that was when you talk about freedom because of his natural talent he could create that, do a rough sketch, present that to The Clerk of the Works and the dean and maybe

the building committee, and they would say that‘s fine, but remember this is timing. So, you didn‘t have time to wait for New York, wait another month for the work to come

‗cause it was on schedule to be dedicated and they had to keep moving the next boss stone and the one after that; they couldn‘t leave these things unfinished.

MK: So he just said, ‗I‘ll do it.‘

CAS: ‗I‘ll do it, I‘ll take care of it,‘ so he sculpted it and carved it from a block of stone that‘s in the ceiling.

MK: And they knew that.

CAS: They knew that. Mhmm...mhmm.

MK: Wow, that is neat. So why couldn‘t stone carvers and masons be found in the U.S?

CAS: They could, but there wasn‘t the same, let‘s say, unions or same trades that were going on as with other professions, let‘s say, blacksmiths or electricians or welders or woodworkers. There were plenty of them out there, but the tradition in this country for stone carving had to be imported from overseas, nobody in America learned stone carving, unless probably trained by someone from Europe.

MK: Oh, ok.

CAS: And with that kind of tradition, having to come literally from across the river or the pond or wherever, that‘s why you have a shortage of talent here. . . not a shortage of work, but most of the people who were doing the work early on were people from

England or from Italy, rarely from Greece. That came a little bit later because the immigration wave didn‘t come until the 50‘s, but it was the early Italians and the English who woulda‘ had those traditions well established in their own country and they brought them to the New World. So, some of the early carving you see in colonial America is very simple and would not have been done by an American. Some of the carving in the

U.S. Capitol. . .even as it was done as some of the history books have dictated by African

Americans, they still had to be trained by somebody else.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: So, nobody here could go to school, I mean, we didn‘t have an architectural school in this country until the 1860‘s. So even in formal training and education we were very far behind until the middle of the 19th century and beyond for formal training and carving. Sculpting was always present; we always had sculpting in this country but in terms of carving, that came with the help with people from overseas.

MK: Yeah, did your father have a favorite something that he carved?

CAS: Yes. The best thing he ever. . . his opinion of what the best work he ever did was the bust of John the 23rd which is the ecumenical pope, ya know, 50 years ago who was sitting in Rome and because of ecumenical and inner faith nature they decided to put him in the building as a great religious leader though he was Catholic because this is an

Episcopal cathedral and an American one, so anybody of any faith can be represented here. So as a portrait he thinks that is the finest work he‘s ever done and then the one I showed you yesterday, that corbel stone where he put the chisel through it.

MK: Yes.

CAS: For the dentist, he thinks that‘s the best, he thinks that‘s some of the best carving in the entire building because it‘s almost three dimensional hallow. So those two pieces that are eye level are works that he talked about as being impressive. When it comes to humorous there were so many stories. One of the best ones that he talked about fondly was another dentist who was a donor, who in the late 70‘s wanted to commemorate his profession, so he was working with a guy trying to figure out what he wanted to do and the ideas from a dentist to a sculptor had to be either very clear or they had to work something out. They ended up working something out, so my dad having a great deal of humor and being a very good what they would call ‗Animalier,‘ which means he just carved animals really well and sculpted ‗em was he designed. . . rather than having a dentist working on somebody in a chair which would be very hard for a gargoyle, he carved a walrus.

MK: Oh (laugh).

CAS: And a walrus upside down and then coming from the corner of the building was a dentist with his tools working on one of the tusks where there was a hole for a cavity.

MK: Oh, (laugh) that‘s funny.

CAS: So, monumental teeth for the dentist profession with the dentist on top and the drain pipe would be in the walrus‘s mouth going out.

MK: Oh ok.

CAS: So that kinda literal exaggerated play on words were some of the things he loved about being here because it was open territory like when you asked about what freedom did he have. The Clerks of the Works and the dean would obviously have to approve it, but the donor who was the one making the gift to the Cathedral said this is what I‘d like and you work with it. So those are some of his favorite things to do.

MK: Yeah, and he could never carve anything he wanted, it would always have to be. . .

CAS: He could carve things (sigh) that he wanted if it was something in a case of an area that‘s not high visibility, there was no donor and it was pretty much open territory and those were a lot of places. There are a lot of things here that were not given as gifts,

ya know, a lot of the grotesques maybe a third of them, there is no story, there‘s no donor, there‘s no anything so he just carved away. He either did a caricature or somebody he saw one day or an animal or a preacher or something and that was the freedom of which was the best about being here.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: That‘s the way it is.

MK: Was there competition among the immigrants of different nationalities?

CAS: I would say yes and no. I would say on the record and off the record the Italians were a pretty tough bunch. They are very proud people, and I think they want to lay claim to the tradition of carving a sculpture as their own and had been the best at it forever. . . When you bring a Greek into it, the Greeks have been a little more quiet than

Italians. I mean, they‘re both loud, Mediterranean people who love to scream and eat things.

MK: Yeah, (laugh).

CAS: But I would say the competition from a nationality standpoint was mutual respect.

Like my dad and, Roger Morigi who was a master carver, always got a long, always got a long with everybody because you knew where they were coming from. Because of them

being foreign, they were on the same even playing field. They were Italians who had been carving in Rome and had been working on the Supreme Court and then comes the

Cathedral is as good as someone who worked at the Academy of Fine Arts in Athens with a piece in Athens and then to the Shrine, Capitol and the Cathedral, you had done the same things. In the fact of Roger Marigi being the master carver, it just meant he was here longer.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: I mean, he didn‘t necessarily have more talent; he was brilliant but ‗master carver‘ came as a title for someone who was just here longer.

MK: Mhmm.

CAS: So the competition was there but it was also an amazing amount of admiration and respect ‗cause you‘re not working against, you‘re working for. You‘re working for a much larger purpose in every respect. And they learned from each other, carving this way, carving that way. Even Barbara Bush, I mean, she was first married to George the first and he was head of the CIA – Came to learn carving at the Cathedral.

MK: Oh, I didn‘t know that.

CAS: And they were also a very helpful bunch, so that kind of helpfulness if it‘s gonna be to the public, they‘d certainly be that way to each other.

MK: Yeah, so they did get a long.

CAS: Absolutely, and as you saw with that collection of bottles on the wall, that‘s further proof because every year they‘d celebrate by having. . .

MK: A bottle of wine.

CAS: Bottle of wine or champagne at the end of New Years and sign the bottle of all of them, so a very tight bunch, many of them here for 10 or 20 years at a time.

MK: Mhmm. And have all of them past away?

CAS: Well, it depends on the time frame. For dad‘s generation he came here in the 50‘s

– 50‘s and 60‘s they‘re all gone. For the ones that came in the 70‘s, many of ‗em are still around like Jay Hall Carpenter, who was a sculptor who‘s around, Malcolm Harlow in

Virginia who‘s around, Patrick Plunket who‘s around, Sean Callahan is around. These are names of which are just part of the stone carving community in D.C. and those people came on in the 70‘s and they‘re still around, but the ones who came from the decade of

‘60 to ‘70 – They‘re all gone.

MK: So my next question is, I guess, what kind of memories do you have about your fathers regard in his skill and work?

CAS: I don‘t think he ever said anything. . . he was the most understated, subtle, unpretentious, non-arrogant, most quiet person about what he did. He just did his work and then he would let other people talk. He was in the Washington Post probably five times between 1960 and 1975.

MK: Mhmm.

CAS: And featuring work on the Cathedral and invariably he was in articles that I still have talking about him in terms of what he did ‗cause he was so creative.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: But he didn‘t talk about creativity, he just did his work and things would come to him. I think he was always very amused by what he came up with, like being in restaurants he would pull out a pen and the menu would become a drawing board or something which would become something of the Cathedral. I think he was. . . he was impressed with the fact that it would come to him so quickly and all the time, and there was never a lack of subject matter. But in terms in how some people can be about artists or sculptors and how sometimes you meet people who are very full of them self, he was

100 percent the opposite and it wasn‘t until 2003 that we had the first exhibition of his

work ever in his life ‗cause he figured, ‗I‘ve worked on the Cathedral, I‘ve worked on the

Shrine, the Smithsonian, and other places, I don‘t need an exhibition.‘ An exhibition he thought was sorta for business, he didn‘t need business and he wasn‘t of a temperament that he would talk to many artists, he enjoyed artists, but he was also very quick to not wanna share a room with people who were so full of themselves without being able to produce, if I can say that.

MK: Well that‘s great though that he thought that way.

CAS: Yeah, very humble. You would never know. I will share one funny story where he was very impressed by people also who were the same temperament. One story he recalled fondly was he was working on the, I think, John the 23rd. He was working on scaffolding up there and this gentleman came up, an older gentleman, and he came and was looking at the work being done, ya know. He‘d come once a week or twice a week or something. Never said a word, watched him, admired his work and the whole bit, and finally they got to talking and after a couple of days of saying ‗hello‘ and exchanging pleasantries, Dad found out that this guy was, I think, Charles Glover who at that point was a much older man but essentially had given the entire land for the Cathedral.

MK: Oh wow, ok.

CAS: So he was way up, just in terms of his gift and what he did, but you would never know that he was responsible for the land the very building was built on. Never said a

word, never introduced himself as ‗Oh, I‘m so and so‘ and he was always impressed by that and I think that‘s the way he connected himself ‗cause he would never, if people would mention or talk about what he had done, he would sort of just shake his hand like this (waves hand), he was never like ‗Oh I‘m so and so.‘

MK: Yeah.

CAS: Didn‘t matter to him.

MK: We bought this land (laugh).

CAS: Exactly. We bought this land, look what I‘d done, I have all this money and he‘s like whatever. He didn‘t care about the fame, when he‘d appear in the paper that was fine, but he went ahead and did his work.

MK: Mhmm

CAS: And I think it was. . . When you‘re that talented you never really had to look for work, it was always there. So when he left the Cathedral in ‗79, ‘80, whatever time frame he was, because the Cathedral at that time was in big fiscal trouble cause they‘d really pushed to get the building built and run into money and it wasn‘t there. He was one of the first people to find work elsewhere. After the Cathedral was like ‗We got to stop the carving and sculpting for now ‗cause we‘re out of money.‘ In terms of

departures, he was one of the first ones to go because they knew that he would find work immediately. He found work in five days.

MK: Wow, he did?

CAS: Five days. So he had a five-day vacation (both laugh). And then was up working on Capitol Hill doing portraits for senators, so not an issue for him. So the work spoke for itself.

MK: Yeah, right. Did he have a favorite type of stone that he worked with?

CAS: I would say Indiana Limestone. The work you see here because remember he was used to Greek marble and when you learn, much like when I learned on red seneca sand stone, when I work on limestone I love it because it‘s so soft, I mean it‘s not a soft material—it gets harder as it gets older but from learning old school with marble from

Greece, coming to America and working with this extremely soft and yet beautiful stone was like a gift.

MK: Yeah, definitely.

CAS: Limestone by its property doesn‘t really chip the way the marble does. It doesn‘t have veins and doesn‘t have many of the same components, so you can work with it so easy. . .very, very easy stuff to work with.

MK: Yeah, what was the most important tool he carved with, you‘re probably really familiar with them?

CAS: I would say a very small hammer or maybe a wooden mallet and a very fine specialized chisel. It‘s hard to say which one in particular because they all serve a specific purpose. The reason I bring up the mallet is because the mallet, when you‘re done carving, you go to a wooden mallet because a wooden mallet doesn‘t have the same pressure as a metal hammer, so the really, really fine work would be done with wood, a wooden mallet on a piece of stone with a chisel as opposed to the pressure or the force of a metal one. So watching him use a wooden mallet was incredibly important because that‘s really what made you have the depth. With what you saw yesterday. . .

MK: The dentist.

CAS: The dentist. That was all with a wooden mallet. All the end pieces because you couldn‘t chip anything off and you would chip if you hit it with metal on metal. Wood on metal, it‘s almost like dull, so that was integral to him. I would say that would be the most important thing was using the mallet ‗cause he knew how to. . .to get the best effect.

MK: Has it changed since then how they carve?

CAS: No. There are machines nowadays, computers can carve stone but it will look like a computer piece of carved stone.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: The process has not changed. As we learned yesterday with the pointing machine, that‘s not changed. None of it‘s changed.

MK: Right. Wow, so why did the stone carvers include modern designs as in gargoyles to the Gothic theme? Maybe you could talk about the Gothic. . .

CAS: Right. The way, ok, this is, in its design this is a fourteenth century Gothic

Cathedral. The designs, the sculpture is very traditional, it‘s very Gothic, it‘s not classical, it‘s not modern, it‘s Gothic. I mean, it had to be because it had to be fit into the building. When it came to highlighting American culture, that‘s where the modern came into it and subject matter. Darth Vader is on this building, as many people know, but he is done in a Gothic style. It‘s still his helmet, but it‘s a Gothic style of helmet. When they were showing Famine and Gluttony, two grotesques on the western towers, those were done in Gothic style. So for modern, the building committee or architect would never approve of something that was thoroughly modern for stone ‗cause it didn‘t correspond with the building design. The windows are very modern and yet they work here because they are still in keeping with the whole Gothic idea, but the aesthetics of it,

which is a tricky thing to get into; you had to bring in for the modern American subject matter, but turn that into a Gothic style.

MK: Yeah.

CAS: And that was the trick here with ‗How do you make something thoroughly

American and bring it back 500 years?‘ And that was the challenge for people carving stone, doing wood, anywhere in between.

MK: And I think it was Bishop Satterlee who wanted it to be a Gothic style.

CAS: Yeah, he was a proponent of the Gothic because if we go back in history there are two. . . have you been to England?

MK: No.

CAS: Ok, when you get to England, of course you‘re gonna see Parliament. There‘s a really famous story about two very prominent architects back in the 19th century. You know Trinity Wall Street?

MK: (shook my head).

CAS: Trinity Wall Street was designed by a guy named Richard Upjohn, who was a son of an Englishman. The houses of Parliament were designed by a guy named Alfred A.

W. Pugin. Pugin and Upjohn would get into these extremely lengthy letter-writing discussions about where Gothic design belonged. Pugin said it belongs in academic settings so, like Oxford Cambridge Parliament. Pugin was stickin‘ to his guns. Upjohn, who was English trained, said Gothic belongs for churches, Gothic belongs for God, it points up. It‘s a vertical, perpendicular style, pointing to Heaven. It belongs only for churches and not for government buildings. Satterlee was a traditionalist, and he aligned himself much more with Upjohn and people from the Victorian era, who really knew

(and in their campaign of building all over the country) that Gothic was the pre-eminent style, so there was no question that this building would not be Romanesque and it would not be neoclassical – it would be Gothic. And that was traditional and that was the way it had to be and coming from an English background, Satterlee. . .that was the way it was and also those were the times and this is the 1890‘s when he was elected. Churches in the 1890‘s were still being done in Gothic style, it wasn‘t ‗till the 1920‘s and ‗30‘s that you brought in the classical because everything was a reaction to what was before, and

Gothic had a strong hold from the 1830‘s to the 1890‘s for churches in America.

MK: And the first Cathedral that was built in America was Saint John the Divine, in

New York City?

CAS: Well in terms of, well it‘s tough; in terms of oldest Cathedrals on a monumental scale, I‘d probably say St. Patrick‘s in New York.

MK: Oh, ok.

CAS: St. Patrick‘s is 1858 to 1879. St. John‘s is about 1891 to present. This one was

1907, so that was sort of the era of doing it, but St. Patrick‘s is a great example, I mean, it was high Victorian. The wave of Romantic era architecture was taking hold of everybody and that really much set the tone for what we built in this country. The 1840‘s is when Trinity Wall Street was built, and on a larger scale it was St. Patrick‘s that would probably have been the first one.

MK: Ok, yeah.

CAS: Yeah, we came 50 years after that.

MK: So when you walk into the Cathedral today could you maybe describe your emotional connection to this great building?

CAS: Extremely complicated. I think having had two parents who met here, my mom went to Beauvoir, my mom was baptized in Bethlehem Chapel in 1932, she met my dad here in 1961, they married not here but at Fort Myers in Arlington in 1964. My brother and I were baptized across the street, but we went to school here so our familiarization goes back to being little kids. Both my mom and dad had their funeral services here in

Bethlehem and the Nave and they‘re both buried in St. Joseph‘s Chapel, so it‘s full circle

for me. I don‘t wanna be possessive or arrogant and say it‘s home, but it‘s my comfort zone here because only the family is here. The carvings of which I know many that he did are to family members, like my grandfather‘s memorial is in the Nave, there‘s ferns around his helmet because he was a general in World War II and those same ferns, well, all shoots of those ferns are still all around our house in Maine, so it‘s very. . . I look at the art and I‘m like ‗I know what that is, what that is, that is.‘

MK: Yeah.

CAS: It‘s weird because for me I‘m very visual and I know little bits and pieces. Either

I was there for carving it or I was there watching it go in. I never get . . . I‘m never haughty about being here because this is everybody‘s building and that‘s kind of a canned answer but it‘s everybody‘s work here. Knowing a lot of the people who worked here in addition to Dad and Mom and Dad, it‘s a comfort zone. Rowan LeCompte, who did 80 of the windows is still around. It‘s a different take on it being sort of on the inside here but I never take it for granted. It‘s amazing to walk in here every time, and I see something new every time I walk in here.

MK: Yeah, that‘s amazing. Kinda like your second home.

CAS: I would say so.

MK: Yeah, that‘s nice. And your dad, he didn‘t teach you to carve.

CAS: He did. My school. . . my schooling was in architectural history so my degrees are in architectural history, they‘re not in carving, they‘re not in sculpting. Everything I know about carving today, I learned from him, and I have a notebook at home of little things that I learned that I wrote down when one day I would be carving something I learned a trick, I‘d write it down because I didn‘t have the capacity to remember like he did as a sculptor ‗cause remember I‘m not. . .I‘m artistic but I‘m not the same talent caliber as he was, so I write stuff down, refer back to it and comes back immediately.

But he taught me everything, I mean, I appreciate it first and foremost but then he taught me everything.

MK: Mhmm, and has your father‘s work kind of helped you like understand. . .?

CAS: It makes me understand good sculpture, especially having worked on this book on outdoor sculpture in Washington. I think about the case of Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter who a lot of people criticized for being a sell out and being commercial and doing melting clocks and elongated figures, but if you look at his work when he was at the

Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, he was a still life painter who did the traditional stuff.

He just got bored, but he could do it. For Dad, knowing proportion and knowing anatomy and knowing scale and knowing flora fauna and animals, I understand classically the way things should be shaped, and when I see something modern I‘m not dismissive of it, I just know that. . . I can tell whether somebody has done that with an understanding of a form and then taking that form in a different direction or it‘s been

something that they have no idea what they‘re doing and they just create it and say ‗I‘m an artist,‘ which is a little tricky.

MK: (Laugh). Yeah. Oh, ok. So your relationship to the Cathedral today is you volunteer?

CAS: I volunteer here and that‘s it. I volunteer here in the Information Systems

Program. This is my little office (lifting his hands), and I‘m here once a week as a volunteer and a lot more times doing tours and otherwise. I‘m not on staff here giving tours; I give tours for groups coming in from other parts of the country. Walking tours and interior tours, but that‘s it.

MK: Oh, ok, well, that‘s great. And to you in your opinion, why is the Cathedral such an important building?

CAS: Because it‘s the only. . .It‘s important in lots of respects. One, from the religious aspect as a built structure, it‘s probably the only Cathedral in the world that with the iconography that the dean, Dean Bratenahl, had laid out before the building was even built. It tells the story of the Judeo Christian tradition from one end of the building when you walk into the western doors to the east end when you‘re outside. I know of no other building that does that in the world, so it‘s very academic, it‘s very literal. Secondly, it‘s the most amazing, collection of ingenuity you can find because it‘s religious first and foremost, but it‘s also completely Americana. The windows are honoring and celebrating

American Institutions. The materials are from America, the people who‘ve worked here are from all over but a lot of them are from America. It is the history of our country in stone, wood, glass, and iron and it‘s open to anybody. I mean, the magnificence being a

National Church is that with everybody who gave money to donate here or didn‘t, doesn‘t matter, they belong here,‘ it‘s open to everybody and very few places can say that.

MK: Mhmm...right.

CAS: It‘s a little intimidating because it‘s National and the whole bit, but you come in here from your small town in Iowa, you come into this office and do a database search in

Iowa, you‘ll find 50 hits. A donor from Iowa, the seal of Iowa, the flag of Iowa, Iowa in the needle point, someone from Iowa, I mean, this is what it‘s about. It‘s about the connection to the country. . . and there‘s no other building like that in terms of you from somewhere else being able to walk in here and feel at home because there‘s a little piece of your hometown in whatever respect, donor, fabric, whatever, here at the Cathedral and that‘s different, very different.

MK: Yeah, nothing like it anywhere else really.

CAS: Not really.

MK: Open to everyone.

CAS: Yeah, I mean it‘s like the Capitol, but because of it being a church building and not a political building, we have access here; we can access things. The Capitol, for all of its magnificence, you can‘t see most of it now because of security, which is unfortunate, and that‘s truly the most American building in the whole city. It‘s not all religious but the history of America is there. Like the Library of Congress is the history of knowledge, the Capitol of its decorations is the history of America, this building is the history of

America and as well as the history of organized religion to faiths in stone in different mediums.

MK: Yeah, wow, so is there anything else you wanna say?

CAS: I would say. . . On and off the record if you have friends who wanna come see more of this stuff in depth give me a call.

MK: Yeah, definitely.

CAS: Friends from school, your parents friends, your relatives from Maine or whom ever just give me a call.

MK: Yeah, alright well thank you very much.

CAS: You got it, let me fill this out for you.

Audio Time Indexing Log

Interviewee: Clift Andrus Seferlis Interviewer: Margaret Kenworthy Date: January 3, 2010 Location: Rare Book Library at the National Cathedral, Washington D.C. Audio Type: Digital (IPod)

______

Minute Mark Topic

5______Background of Clift Seferlis/ Impact of his father, Constantine, as immigrant/places where Constantine worked

10______Immigration of Constantine Seferlis to United States/ skills needed to be a stone carver

15______Difference between stone carvers and stone sculptors/ Clift Seferlis‘s occupation at Smithsonian

20______Family on Cathedral grounds/ Memories of Constantine

25______How Constantine learned to stone carve and sculpt/ Constantine‘s education in Greece

30______Nationalities of stone carvers/ Difference between stone sculptor/stone mason/stone carvers

35______Building materials used in the construction National Cathedral

40______Constantine‘s freedom in carving

45______Italian and Greek stone carvers

50______Constantine‘s regard for his skill, work

55______Important tools for carving stone/ Elements of modern and Gothic design

60______Bishop Satterlee and Upjohn‘s different opinions of Gothic design

65______Emotional connection to Washington National Cathedral

Interview Analysis

Oral history is the recollection of personal experiences and does not present the bare facts of events, but a story, which intrigues the reader. Oral history focuses on one person or community, telling history on a human scale, which gives the reader a sense of what life was like for an ordinary person during that period. It is an intimate piece of work, which catches the reader so that he feels connected to the interviewee‘s story.

While oral history gives a more personal view on the events, history books tell the facts, therefore lacking details of the context. For my Oral History Project, I interviewed Clift

Andrus Seferlis, whose father, Constantine Seferlis, was a stone carver at the Washington

National Cathedral. I would have hoped to do an oral history of Constantine, but because he passed away in 2005, I interviewed his son who has many memories of his father and his work. Since I interviewed C.A. Seferlis, it broadened the oral history topic; not only did I learn about his father, but I also learned about the son. I chose this topic because I wanted to learn about the long construction of the National Cathedral and especially the intimate relationship that C.A. Seferlis and his father had with such a great building. The story of Constantine Seferlis is valuable because his work contributed to the art of the

National Cathedral, and C.A. Seferlis brought his story to life, providing details of the artist and his work. It was fascinating to learn about Constantine Seferlis‘s work, but also about the rhythm of his family life, which closely connected to the Cathedral.

Studs Terkel, a prominent American oral historian, was very successful because he believed that many people had something worth hearing. He once stated, ―The average

American has an indigenous intelligence, a native wit . . . It‘s only a question of piquing that intelligence‖ (Grimes 1). Studs Terkel ―relied on his enthusiastic but gentle

interviewing style to elicit, in rich detail, the experiences and thoughts of ordinary

Americans‖ (Grimes 1). There are major differences between standard history books and oral history, and people usually prefer one over the other. While oral history gives a more personal view of the events, history books tell the facts. One gets a bigger picture of history by reading books and watching films, but oral history is a small, individual snapshot of someone‘s life.

Getting started on the Oral History Project was quite simple. I kept ahead of the process instead of lagging behind and having all of the work accumulate. I like to be organized with my work, and I think that organization was key for this project. It was helpful to make an oral history folder in which I put all of the articles, pictures, and handouts to keep everything together. I thoroughly prepared myself for the interview, because I researched my topic very well. Unfortunately, I was unable to find information on the background of the stone carvers, which was disappointing since they were the focal point of the interview. In addition, the sources I did find failed to make clear the distinction between stone cutters and carvers. I thought I formulated my questions for the interview very well, and all of them were open-ended, which encouraged C.A. Seferlis to expand on his answers. Early in the interview, I asked if he had done any carving on the

Cathedral. C.A. Seferlis expanded to include the fact that reduced financial resources have caused the Cathedral to eliminate the sculptor in residence. In fact, he said, ―There has not been a lot of carving done here since about 1990‖ (Seferlis qtd in Kenworthy 25).

During the interview, I could recognize when his expanded answer actually addressed another of my questions, and I was able to come up with follow-up questions. I also made clarification when C.A. Seferlis said something that was vague.

My interviewee gave the story of how one stone carver happened to come to

America from Greece, and it would seem likely that other carvers emigrated under similar circumstances. During the interview, I felt as if I were actually speaking to

Constantine, because his son gave life to his father and his work. C.A. Seferlis clarified many of the generalities that appeared in the sources about the artisans who worked on the Cathedral. In addition, the sources never mentioned the term ―sculptor,‖ but C.A.

Seferlis made a careful distinction between a carver and a sculptor: ― . . . [A] sculptor is somebody who creates a work from the beginning usually using a sketch . . . and then they take the clay and they make that clay into a model . . . make it into plaster and then

. . . you carve stone from the plaster model . . . . [N]ot everybody who is a sculptor is a stone carver . . . .‖ (Seferlis qtd Kenworthy 21).

I connected better to what he had to say than from a written source, because he expressed emotion and told intriguing stories about his father and his own childhood.

Something that I did not come upon in my sources was that Biblical chronology directed the construction of the Cathedral, which had never been done before.

The interview showed Constantine Seferlis to be a quiet man who worked intensely, while his fellow carvers, many of whom were Italian, tended to be much more social and rowdy when at work. As C.A. Seferlis said, ―When you bring a Greek into it, the Greeks have been a little more quiet than Italians. I mean, they‘re both loud,

Mediterranean people who love to scream and eat things‖ (Seferlis qtd Kenworthy 46).

I could sense C.A. Seferlis‘s deep, emotional connection to the facts because his own life revolved around Mount Saint Alban. When I asked him about that connection to the Cathedral, he responded: ―Extremely complicated. I think having had two parents

who met here . . . . My brother and I . . . went to school here . . . . Both my mom and dad had their funeral services here . . . and they‘re both buried in St. Joseph‘s Chapel, so it‘s full circle for me . . . [I]t‘s my comfort zone here because only the family is here‖

(Seferlis qtd Kenworthy 57).

I learned how much freedom his father had in his work, including coming up with his own designs, but that many times he had to work with a donor on the design concept.

Even when he was assigned a specific subject, ―[T]here was a lot of freedom with his ability as an artist first and foremost to interpret what somebody wanted and then to carve it to perfection‖ (Seferlis qtd Kenworthy 41). I also learned how the artists had to adapt modern American design elements to the requirements of 14th century Gothic style. For example, when the Darth Vader gargoyle was created, it had to be Gothically modified.

Constantine Seferlis was one of the stone carvers who helped decorate the last

Gothic cathedral. A very reticent man, Constantine refused to draw attention to himself and his work. He was among many artisans who decorated major American structures and whose story has been generally lost to history.

Listening to the interview, it is clear that its value lies in the whole rather than any particular piece of information it reveals. While C.A. Seferlis was very proud of his father, Constantine, he had no personal agenda, but was equally talking about the stone carvers as a group. Much of what I learned was personal memory, very little of which is subject to objective verification. The particular pieces C.A. Seferlis said his father carved, however, can be verified in the Cathedral records. By the end of the interview I had a much better understanding of a stone carver‘s occupation and I learned something of what it took to be someone so skilled in the craft. Throughout our interview, I felt that

I connected well to the stories C.A. Seferlis told about his father.

During the process of doing my oral history, I learned a number of valuable skills that I will be able to use in the future. First, I learned how to use a formal outline to organize my research. Taking my notes in accordance with this structure made writing the paper much easier. The librarians taught me new research methods including subscription databases such as JSTOR and Historical Newspapers. I also learned that this topic and probably many others do not lend themselves to online research since there is little available; the old-fashioned book is sometimes the best source. Another skill that I learned was how to interview and transcribe an oral history recording. Finally, I honed my skill at communicating with other people through the interview process. In conclusion, doing this oral history was a rich educational experience for me, and it greatly increased my appreciation of the Washington National Cathedral.

Appendix

Constantine Seferlis both carved and sculpted this grotesque. It is a preacher from the Colonial era trying to spread the word of God to the Native Peoples of America.

Constantine Seferlis carved this grotesque, which is in the Rare Book Room Hall, where Clift Seferlis and I had the interview.

Each New Year‘s Eve, the stone carvers celebrated by drinking wine together. Below is a collection of the bottles. (Located in a Cathedral tower room)

Margaret Kenworthy and Clift Seferlis standing next to one of the first constructed architectural models of the Washington National Cathedral.

Works Consulted

Allen, Robert Tate. “New Spire Will Rule Washington Skyline.” Washington Post. May 5, 1946. Pg. B3

Arnold, Walter S. "Journeyman Stonecutters Association of North America." Editorial. Available at: , Web. 5 Dec. 2009.

Dyne, Larry Van. “If These Stones Could Talk.” Washingtonian Magazine. October 1, 2001: 1-12.

Feller, Richard T., and Marshall W. Fishwick. For Thy Great Glory. Culpeper, Virginia: The Community Press, 1965.

“For National Cathedral.” New York Times. January 29, 1900, pg. 1.

Grimes, William. ―Studs Terkel, Listener to Americans, Dies at 96‖. October 31, 2008. Available at Visited: January 20, 2010.

Hewlett, Richard Greening. The Foundation Stone. Rockville, MD: Montrose Press, 2007.

Hunt, Marjorie. Master Craftsmen of Washington National Cathedral. Washington D.C and New York: The Smithsonian Institution , 1999.

Kenworthy, Margaret. Interview with the Reverend Stuart Kenworthy. December 9, 2009.

Lloyd III, Samuel T., et al. Living Stones: Washington National Cathedral at 100. Cheverly, Maryland: Peake DeLancey Printers, 2007.

“Mission.” Available at: Visited December 9, 2009.

Webster’s New World Dictionary and Thesaurus, Second Addition. ―Gothic.‖ New York: Hungry Minds, Inc., 2002. 1989.

“What does Darth Vader have to do with the Cathedral?” Available at: < http://www.nationalcathedral.org/pdfs/darth.pdf> Visited December 9, 2009.