shiki-ishi 敷石

A stone-cutting technique for paving stones. According to certain tea ceremony sources various sized stones were used for tea ceremony gardens as well as gravel paving, *ishidan 石段, and *nobedan 延段. Nobedan are natural stones and gravel arranged into a style called *arare koboshi 霰零し. Shiki-ishi also incorporates processed stones to produce various patterns: grid paving gobanmejiki 碁盤目敷; stones arranged in rows heiretsujiki 並列敷; straight line paving chokuretsushiki 直列敷; diamond joint paving shihanmeshiki 四半目敷. Sometimes small rectangular stones lined up in rows, or in a straight line. Another pattern is called the cracked-ice pattern *hyōretsumon 氷裂文, because it has irregular cracks like those found in ice. There is also a hexagonal pattern.