Limestone Heritage Festival brings talented carvers to Bedford

James Lax worked on a limestone carving in front of the Bedford Depot Friday as part of the Limestone Heritage Festival.

Lax, who resides in the Chicago area, attended the Limestone Heritage Festival from 2009-2019, "with a break during the COVID years. It's fun to come down and see old friends and the progress that's happening downtown."

Lax said that he enjoys seeing all the limestone work on houses and buildings in Bedford. Lax explained that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, trade unions stipulated that a certain percentage of the construction of a building had to have decorative work (usually 7-9%). This provided a lot of opportunities for stone carvers but came to an end during WWII. After the war, buildings became more modernistic, and the trade unions lost their clout to demand decorative work. Lax said in the last decade, there has been a "revisiting," or resurgence, in decorative limestone work.

Lax said he was doing a "second take on a piece I completed in 2009" at Bedford Depot the last weekend in June. His carving was a gothic letter "L" that evoked special memories.

Lax said, "I wanted to make it more three dimensional, the readability was a little congested.

"I had given this to my father and he had it sitting around the base of a locust tree," Lax recalled. "My dad was an artist. He was awfully tickled to see my progress. He didn't have the opportunities I had. As my skills (as a stone carver) improved, I decided to give it a more three dimensional quality."

Lax said in the Chicago area, limestone is hard to obtain.

"This is a found piece of limestone from a Victorian house in Bloomington, Illinois," he said, indicating the cap to a porch column he was working on.

About the carving process, Lax said, "carving creates a hardening on the outer shell of the stone. Limestone, before it is cured, actually has a certain amount of moisture in it. It also has a grain, much like wood. The hardened outer shell is tricky to carve, because large flakes of stone can come off. It took me a while to get over the 'scare factor' of causing damage to the stone."

In addition to carvers, the Limestone Heritage Festival featured live music, including Stone Carnival, on the Harp Commons stage.