Letter-Perfect

He works in a woolen vest, precisely knotted tie, pressed blue oxford shirt and clutching a 6-pound hammer.

Nathen Blackwell, 79, is nothing if not fastidious, a fact that might be appreciated by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Board of Trustees, whose names he is carving into the limestone walls of the Reagan presidential library.

The diminutive Ventura man, with silver hair and a pencil-thin mustache, hardly fits the image of a stone carver. He is a former professional ballroom dancer, a David Niven look-alike who possesses an impeccably wry British wit.

Michelangelo, he says, was a wonderful sculptor but lousy at lettering. Lettering, or more precisely, “V-cut” letters, are Blackwell’s specialty, so he knows what he is talking about.

Standing away from his tools, the only hint of his trade are his massive, muscular hands, which he takes pride in, pampering them with lotion and daily exercises. Blackwell used to intimidate his daughters’ dates by giving them bone-crunching handshakes.

Those hands know every inch of his hammer and chisels, which he forged from tungsten almost 60 years ago. His hammer, polished to a hard, bright silver, has a thumbprint-size indentation on each side from decades of striking his chisels.

“All those years of tapping,” Blackwell said. “Millions and millions of taps.”

At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, he guides his tools over the limestone, tiny taps pinging as the letters slowly emerge. Only strong hands could do such work day after day for a lifetime.

They have carved other creations. He finished the uncompleted scrollwork on a 2,000-year-old Roman bath for actor Michael Douglas’ Spanish castle. He carved an English viscount’s family crest for a church memorial. He has fashioned tombstones for starlets, and at Hearst Castle, he restored a 14th-century reliquary, made for the remains of a Russian czar.

The docents didn’t even know what they had, he said. They told him it was a jewelry case. He didn’t bother to correct them, he just carved new ebony moldings, replaced the damaged rock crystals and gave them back their masterpiece.

He has his stone-worker legends too. Seems there was a man who carved his own tombstone, expiration date and all, then died as scheduled.

It’s true, he swears.

At the library, Blackwell is becoming something of a living exhibit, as patrons pause to watch him elegantly perched atop his ladder in the lobby corner. A few ask questions or snap a photograph, but all keep a polite distance--this dapper gentleman is clearly working.

He has worn a tie to work ever since he started, at age 16, as an apprentice to a stone carver in his native Hull, England.

He grew up poor. His father, who was in the oil refinery business, was hit hard by the 1929 stock market crash. But Blackwell had his love of drawing, which led him to designing letters for the Hull stone carver.

After his seven-year apprenticeship, he stayed briefly in England, managing a stone company, but he didn’t like being tied to one job. So in 1954, he and his wife, Barbara, followed some friends to Canada, but he tired of the harsh winters and moved to Santa Monica in 1958.

There he carved a niche for himself with the Hollywood crowd, accepting commissions for stonework, cabinetry, anything that came up. He was offered jobs on movie sets but preferred working outdoors.

Hollywood had other benefits. Blackwell took pleasure in being mistaken for the late British actor David Niven, handing out autographs, accepting party invitations as the screen legend. But he isn’t quite Niven’s spitting image.

“He was about 2 inches taller than me,” he said.

He has had bad moments.

His left knee has been in a brace ever since he dropped a 200-pound stone on it years ago. Then there was the Santa Barbara society matron who stiffed him for half the cost of a black marble fireplace. Blackwell could have gone after the rest, but she shortchanged other artisans, and he figured a bad reputation was consequence enough.

She eventually went bankrupt and lost her mansion anyway, he said.

Blackwell doesn’t discuss the cost of his projects.

Uncivilized, that. They cost what they cost.

When he isn’t working, Blackwell, a widower, enjoys ballroom dancing with his fiancee, Millie Grunder, 79, whom he met at a ball in Oxnard.

He was smitten right away, he said. When he first went to her house, he thought she could do with a nicer front door and offered to carve one for her.

Yeah, right, Millie thought.

One new door and four years later, they are still together and will marry next month.

But Blackwell says he will never retire. The couple plan to go on cruises between his jobs; but otherwise, he will still be carving his letters, in tie and vest, carefully vacuuming up the dust afterward.