Present Day
As the material is not in regular supply, much restoration of earlier Sussex Marble work takes place using Purbeck Marble, which is considered a more stable stone. An example of this practice occurred as early as 1870, when the font at St Margaret's Church in West Hoathly had to be restored but the original Sussex Marble, quarried in Petworth, had run out.
The industry and workings are long gone although small new rural development around the Surrey/Sussex border occasionally brings up new seams of the stone. The qualities of the material are being rediscovered through British sculptors like Jon Edgar who, after a gap of nearly 200 years, are having to re-discover the ways of working it, its strengths and weaknesses.
Read more about this topic: Sussex Marble
Famous quotes containing the words present and/or day:
“We do not rest satisfied with the present.... So imprudent we are that we wander in the times which are not ours and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“I’ve finally figured out why soap operas are, and logically should be, so popular with generations of housebound women. They are the only place in our culture where grown-up men take seriously all the things that grown-up women have to deal with all day long.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)