Marble-Mover

Not all men are stereotyped doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs. In Georgia, last week, death came to a terrapin-hatcher (see p. 63). And in Georgia, 55 years ago, was born a man destined to be an expert marble-mover. This man, too, died, last week.

Marble is the aristocrat of sculptural materials. Like an aristocrat it is sumptuous but brittle. Subjected to undue stresses it splits and cracks. Thus the transportation of marble is ticklish, and cannot be done with casual maneuvering as can steel girders. Sculptors exercise prodigious care in moving marble statuary from studios to sites. One fissure will ruin the labor of years, and one fissure may be produced by the slip of one gawkish moving man.*

Emmett Lawrence of Georgia could move marble statuary. And many a sculptor found it out. Frederick MacMonnies, Daniel Chester French, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, George Grey Barnard--all employed Emmett Lawrence. They knew little about him, but it was enough. A tall, powerfully muscled Negro, his reputation spread slowly and mysteriously. He knew just what joists to build, what pressures to apply. With perhaps five or six assistants, he would work for hours over slow shifts and perilous easements. Emmett Lawrence eyed and estimated, gave the commands. Often night fell or rains came but there was no stopping. The placing of a marble statue is one task that must be completed without pause.

Emmett Lawrence was always on call, a rare and curious technician. He went to perform his unadvertised handiwork in most of the large Eastern cities. Among his placements were the two lions which crouch before the entrance of the New York Public Library. During 30 years of work, he never broke or marred a statue.

Two years ago he contracted consumption. That dignified patrician, Sculptor George Grey Bernard, received the invalid into his studio and there he stayed for six months. Later he went to a hospital. At the end of a year, Sculptor Barnard took him back to the studio, where, last week, he died.

"Emmett Lawrence's strange gift," says Sculptor Barnard, "comes to perhaps one man in many thousands. He obeyed the laws of gravity with uncanny instinct, toiled always with supreme patience, and was one of the finest characters I have ever known. He could judge by his eye, to the fraction of an inch, if a statue weighing tons was off balance. . . Some day I hope to do something in the way of a memorial for him."

*Sculptor Jo Davidson spent nine hours, missed a dinner party, watching his statue of the late, great Senator La Follette being moved into Manhattan's Anderson Galleries (TIME, Feb. 11).