Sound of Stone: The Acoustic World of Barbara Hepworth

Sound of Stone: The Acoustic World of Barbara Hepworth

Responding to sound, resistance and form — Hepworth's process of listening to stone as she carved. Written by Kyra Harris.

Barbara Hepworth with the plaster of Garden Sculpture (Model for Meridian) in Trewyn Studio, June 1960 © Bowness. Photo by R.W. Kochalski


Those who remember mid-century St Ives often recall a distinct sound associated with that era: the clear, bright ring of a metal chisel repeatedly striking stone.

Reverberating across the town, this percussive chime would travel along the granite streets, cutting through the pristine light of the harbour, before fading gently into the bay beyond. Follow it to its source, and you would find yourself on Barnoon Hill, looking up at the twenty-foot garden walls of Trewyn House. Behind them, Barbara Hepworth was at work.

Between her left ‘thinking hand’ of touch, and her right ‘motor hand’ of chisel, Hepworth relied on a third tool: resonance.

By listening to changes in pitch after each strike, she would respond to that feedback, allowing the acoustics to guide her. As she observed, ‘The sound of a mallet or hammer is music to my ears, when either is being used rhythmically, I can tell by sound alone what is going on’.

A clean, ringing note signalled that the stone would accept another strike; a dull, heavier tone warned of an internal fracture. Identifying that which the eye could not, this sonic sensibility became integral to her direct carving process - her forms emerging through conversation between material and maker, the final work a collaborative piece between the sculptor and stone.

Her sensitivity to sound was not incidental; as an accomplished pianist from an early age, she naturally applied her sense of timekeeping to her carving. References to music appear in the titles of her works; her stringed sculptures suggest the tension of kinetic energy crucial to instruments. Much like a piece of music, Hepworth's works reveal themselves gradually as the viewer moves around them, transformed by the changing play of light across their surfaces.

Composer Priaulx Rainer, a friend of Hepworth's, wrote Rhythms of the Stones, inspired by the cadence generated during the carving of Contrapuntal Forms. Rainer, with horticultural knowledge, played a large part in landscaping Hepworth's Sculpture Garden at Trewyn. Together, they were conscious of how the sounds of nature might move through the space and, in turn, how they could choreograph people's interaction with the sculptures within it.

Acquiring the former dance hall, Palais de Danse, as a secondary studio introduced a new kind of acoustic - one designed for music and shaped for movement. It was not a place for carving, but for exploring scale, proportion and the way forms might relate to a moving body. A building born from the will to dance, and sculptures created with wider travel in mind, the echo of collectors' footsteps alongside Hepworth’s own became a duet of expansion, each step carrying the sculptures further into the world.

Barbara Hepworth with the plaster of Figure for Landscape and a bronze cast of Figure (Archaean) Nov 1964 © Bowness. Photo by Lucien Myers.

Today, Hepworth’s work is complete. Her strikes on stone no longer act as a pendulum keeping time for the town; instead, her pierced forms stand in silence, looking out from within the landscape, as much a part of nature as she had intended. They have lived through decades of seasons, touched thousands of curious and resting hands, gathered lichen, changing under rain and altering with the light of the sun and moon.

Though Hepworth’s tools are set down, her presence continues - sustained through her sculptures' quiet participation with the world.

—

Written by Kyra Harris

Further Image Credits

Main Image, Barbara Hepworth with the plaster of Garden Sculpture (Model for Meridian) in Trewyn Studio, June 1960 © Bowness. Photo by R.W. Kochalski

3rd Image, Right, Bicentric Form in the carving yard in Trewyn Studio, January 1950. Photograph by Studio St Ives © Bowness

4th Image, Hero, Barbara Hepworth in Trewyn Studio, October 1949. Photograph by Studio St Ives © Bowness 

Barbara Hepworth working on the prototype for the United Nations Single Form in the Palais de Danse, January 1961. Photograph by Studio St Ives. Barbara Hepworth © Bowness
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