Artisans make a big entrance

By Kath Gannaway
THE tension on the face of Mark Kenney is as taut as the tension on the ropes lifting the historic western doors of St Paul’s Cathedral onto the truck waiting to transport them back home.
Mark, owner of Kenney-Pierce Timber in Healesville’s industrial estate, and a small, elite crew of local artisans, had just finished what many would regard as a ‘heavenly’ assignment.
A one-off re-build and restoration requiring them to join the previously fixed arched section of the more than 115-year-old Australian blackwood doors to the main rectangular doors and to re-invent the hinges and bolts to hold the additional weight.
The main team, timber mastercraftsmen Mark and Rob Amos and sculptor Ralph Driessen, had worked day and night on the six metre high doors to meet the Commonwealth Games deadline which came with a particular emphasis on the expected visit of Prince Edward to the hallowed Melbourne cathedral.
Transferring the doors on a forklift is excruciatingly precise.
The doors must be manoeuvred between piles of timber and factory pylons which at times had just inches to spare.
Winching them from the forklift to the waiting truck, which will take them back to Melbourne for refitting the next day, is equally heart-stopping.
With Mark, Ralph and Silvandale Transport’s Scott Burton guiding the doors metres above the ground through a very narrow window of possible misadventure, the repercussions of any misjudgment are unthinkable.
Mark was approached to do the job more than a year ago and agreed to it on the basis he would not have to tender.
“It’s one of those jobs you need to put so much time into. I wanted to have the flexibility to do a good job but at the same time I didn’t want to lose money on it.
“I have done enough of those sort of jobs over the years,” he said.
The doors are a masterpiece of craftsmanship in the old style.
“They employed us for our joinery skills, our ability to do the job in the old fashioned way,” Mark said pointing to the mortise and tenon joins and the thick timber bones which provide the strength for such towering, heavy doors.
Ralph’s skills with decorative ironwork are similarly valued.
He points out that even the bolts, part of an estimated 100 kilos of steel in the doors, are hand-worked with fine detail.
The change to the shape of the doors, Mark explained, came about from a need to improve light into the internal annexe of the western entrance to the cathedral.
An internal glass mosaic wall had been incorporated into the annexe but it was discovered that the existing doors did not let in enough light to really let is shine.
Healesville artist Linda George, who was enlisted to help with the finishing of the doors in Healesville, said the effect the extra light has on the glass wall is extraordinary.
“With all the light now shining on it, it is just beautiful,” she said.
There were huge sighs of relief, and, no doubt, chests swelled with pride, as the Great Western Doors were finally refitted to serve another, who knows how many centuries of service to Melbourne’s most iconic place of worship.
Big things can happen in a little place like Healesville.