a photo gallery currently showing: an exhibit of photographs of the stonework of the Balearic Islands and the Catalan mainland

N ADVENTUROUS AND AMIABLE GROUP, the so-called Balearic Lithological Expedition, five stonemasons, a geologist and a couple of camp followers, rambled around the islands of Mallorca and Minorca off the Mediterranean coast of Spain this past October, exploring the excellent stonework there to be found. The tour culminated in Barcelona. Over the course of five millennia, successive cultures have made creative use of the abundant and eminently workable limestone of which the islands are constituted. Examples of their handiwork were sought out, studied and photographed over a two week period. The tour culminated on the mainland, in Barcelona. The group was happiest in the distant past, in the realms of prehistory. The islands were first settled by Neolithic peoples, those intrepid souls who ventured out into what must have seemed open sea in vessels we can only imagine to arrive at and to establish themselves on the isolated specks of land scattered here and there throughout the Mediterranean. (This is a subject that will be revisited more extensively in some future issue.) Sa Canova, in Mallorca, the megalithic structure on which the group is pictured, has a center support, a round column that was incrementally widened while the circular wall surrounding it was narrowed until the gap between them could be spanned by lintel slabs.