Detail

Brick archways, stone entry pillars and patio medallions, laid by hand

Complex geometric brick archways, grand stone entry pillars and custom patio medallions, built by a family-owned masonry crew out of Williston, SC.

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Brick archways: forms, voussoirs and a keystone that locks the ring

Bosse Stoneworks describes its decorative work as complex geometric brick archways, grand stone entry pillars, and custom patio medallions, and the arch is where that claim gets tested first. An arch is carried on a timber form cut to the exact curve. The wedge-shaped brick or stone, the voussoirs, are laid up from both springing points toward the middle, and nothing holds until the keystone goes in at the crown. Every joint above the form has to be spaced correctly before that last piece is set.

That is why geometric patterns are a mason's job and not a finish carpenter's. A segmental arch over a garden gate in Aiken, a round-headed opening in a courtyard wall, a soldier-course arch over a window: each one pushes sideways as well as down, and the piers beside it have to take that thrust. The form stays in until the mortar has gained its strength, and the joints are tooled to one consistent profile so the curve reads clean from the street.

Entry pillars start in the ground: footing, core, then a cap that sheds water

A grand stone entry pillar looks like a block of stone and is really a small structure. It sits on its own concrete footing with a reinforced core, and the stone or brick is the face wrapped around it. Pillars flanking a drive outside Williston or Augusta carry gate hardware and take the occasional bumped corner, so the footing size and how the core is tied to the face matter more than the stone itself.

The cap is the piece people notice and the piece that decides how long the pillar lasts. A good cap overhangs the face, carries a slight crown so rain runs off instead of soaking into the joints below, and has a drip edge underneath. If the pillar will hold a lantern, John and the crew run the conduit while the core is going up, because chasing a wire into finished stone later is how caps and faces crack.

Patio medallions and the details that read from the house

A medallion is a decision made at the start of a patio, not an add-on at the end. The pattern is laid out from its center point, the field pavers are cut to meet it, and the border is set so the medallion sits square to the door people will look out of. Worked in contrasting brick or stone, it turns a plain rectangle of paving into a focal point you can see from the kitchen window.

Detail work tends to spread. One arch makes the flat wall beside it feel unfinished, and a corbelled cap or a soldier course framing an opening starts to ask for company. If you have a gate, a porch or a patio in North Augusta, Evans or Orangeburg that wants one piece of this, call (803) 300-3734 on a weekday between 7 and 4 and describe it.

Cast stone balustrade staircase and balcony on a stucco house

Bosse Stoneworks is family-owned, with 48+ years of masonry experience behind every arch, pillar and patio.

Other masonry that pairs with arches and pillars

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