Solving a World Problem

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18143, 30 April 1927, Page 19

Solving a World Problem

A Mason s Feat

NO ONE vould have imagined when, 350 years before C hrist, one of the Seven Wonders of the World—the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus—--was built, that it would ever be. reconstructed by Rill Pinker, ri -working mason at the British Musegjfn. For centuries the inausoleum describ-o-I. by Pliny has puz&fed archaeologists. Fir Charles X r wfter excavating and bringing back ' fragments of the buildirrgri-fried to ’reconstruct it, and other eminent- men set up theories. But it an architectural puzzle Now totnes" M r William Pinker, foreman the British Museum, whose new ,re,construction’ of .the mausoleum, after fifty years df enthusiastic labours, has earned the fommendation of the experts. In an interview, Mr 11. B. Walters, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiqui-

ties,, spoke in terms of the highest praise of Mr Pinker’s work, which has been set up in the Mausoleum Room. Bcer-Qlass Clue. The model is to scale—l to 40—and its actual construction in plaster was the work of Mr \V. Stacey, sculpture mason, under the supervision of Mr P. N. Prvce, the assistant-keeper; but the technical Study was the fifty years’ work of Mr \V. Pinker. “I am eighty years old.” he said, “but T am still working. When [ began work at nine years of age, in Wiltshire, scaring birds at is Gd a week, I could not read or write. I have never been a scholar; but I think I can claim myny archaeological discoveries of some value, and I have found and pieced together sixteen fragments of the world-famous Elgin marbles. “You see that fine capital of an lonic column from the archaic temple of Diana Ephesus?” he went on. with simple satisfaction. "Well, I had to recon-