Switzerland is a country of diversity. Its inhabitants speak four official languages – German, French, Italian and Romansh. Multiculturalism is not a foreign concept: 24 percent of the Swiss are foreign citizens. And yet Switzerland is regarded as a down-to-earth nation with a sense of tradition. People want to preserve their idiosyncrasies. And so Swiss sandstone also likes to present itself as old stone in a new guise.
Photo© Bärlocher quarry stone sculpting
In the Bärlocher quarry, for example, located above Rorschach Bay on Lake Constance, twelve employees quarry around 10,000 cubic meters of Rorschach sandstone every year and split or saw it to the desired dimensions on site.
This Swiss sandstone was recently used in the Giessen residential park in Meilen. Between the prefabricated exposed concrete elements of the residential buildings is quarry-rough masonry made of Rorschach sandstone. The visible surfaces and butt joints are split, while the bearing surfaces are split or flamed. It took around ten months to implement the facing masonry in the Scottish bond on the construction site. The butt joints and bed joints are between two millimetres and a maximum of five millimetres in size. The joints are open on the outside, giving the impression of a dry stone wall, while on the inside – for reasons of stability – they are fully bonded with a special adhesive for natural stone coverings.
Photo© Müller Naturstein AG
At the upper end of Lake Zurich, between Schmerikon and Eschenbach, the Müller natural stone company is now in its third generation of quarrying Bollinger sandstone. The name of the molasse sandstone is derived from the village of Bollingen, near which the relatively large deposits are located. Today, these deposits are almost vertical and are therefore mined in shafts, by means of deep quarries. The economic mining depth is around 50 meters. This effort is only worthwhile because the sandstone layers are very thick and hardly disturbed.
However, quarrying is not the Müllers’ only area of work: in 1992, the Müller brothers invested in a workshop where the raw blocks are processed using gang saws, diamond milling machines, a lathe or in the company’s own stone sculpture workshop.
Photos© Emilio Stecher
A little further southwest on the Rooterberg mountain range, Emilio Stecher’s company has been quarrying Rooterberg molasses sandstone in its own Wiesweid quarry for over 65 years. Rooterberg sandstone, once a popular type of stone, is now only quarried there. After its heyday in the 19th century, the region around the village of Root was unable to keep pace with the progressive industrialization of the industry.
Mining is subject to strict regulations and is carried out using explosives. The large bedding areas of the gray-blue stone are excellent for splitting and give it a characteristic appearance. This Swiss sandstone has found its niche and is often used as a discreet and neutral floor covering, even in a polished version.
Photo© Carlo Bernasconi AG
The fourth in the group is Carlo Bernasconi AG from the Bern region. The company extracts Bernese sandstone from the Ostermundigen and Krauchthal quarries. This Swiss sandstone has been quarried in Ostermundigen since the 15th century, and practically all of the historic buildings in Bern’s old town are made of it. But while Ostermundigen was home to the largest quarry in Switzerland in the 19th century, the Bernasconi family is the last to extract their stone there today. It is mainly used for the preservation of historical monuments. This is an important market niche, as suitable replacement material for historical buildings is usually only available from deposits that were already in use at the time.
Find out more about Swiss sandstone in STEIN in July 2014.