Custom Stonework in Corfu

Custom stonework is the bespoke work that no catalogue covers: voussoir arches, lintels, copings, fireplace surrounds and loggias, each cut from solid stone to a specific opening and a specific drawing. We work from the architect's detail, set out the stone full-size, and dress every piece by hand so it carries load and sits true. Most of ours is Sinies limestone from Mount Pantokrator.

A masonry arch is geometry before it is decoration. We set out the arch full-size on the floor, strike the curve, and number each voussoir so the taper of the joints throws the load down into the springers and out to the abutments. A timber centre carries the ring until the keystone goes in; once it is struck, the arch stands on compression alone, no steel, no hidden lintel. Every arch we build is drawn and set out this way, each voussoir dressed to its own line.

Lintels, copings and fireplace surrounds are the same discipline at smaller scale. A coping is shaped to shed water clear of the wall below; a lintel is sized and bedded so it spans without splitting; a fireplace is built around its flue and gather, not applied to the face of one. We dress arrises and beds by hand rather than to a machined edge, so the finished piece reads as cut stone, not cladding, and we detail it to be re-pointable in lime, the way the island's older walls were built to breathe.

We prefer to be drawn in early, while the opening is still a line on a section. Stone wants its dimensions settled before the wall goes up, bearing, springing height, the depth of the reveal, and a half-day at the drawing stage saves cutting a voussoir twice. Sinies limestone has faced Corfu buildings since the seventeenth century; worked honestly, a custom arch or surround is meant to outlast the rest of the building.