What did masons look like in the middle age?

Answer 1

Throughout the very long medieval period, stonemasons dressed very much the same as carpenters, tailors, smiths, butchers, leather-workers and other craftsmen; their clothes changed to match the fashions of the day but were always fairly simple, plain and cheap compared with the bright clothes and expensive materials of the aristocracy.

A very rare 12th century image of a stonemason and a wall-painter can be seen via the link below, which is taken from a modern book cover. The original image is in the Dover Bible of around 1160.

The mason (on the right) wears a typical linen coif on his head, a brownish-red woollen tunic or cote, and black ankle boots of turnshoe style (leather boots sewn inside-out and then turned the right way so all the stitches are inside). These boots have a completely flat and smooth sole and are slightly pointed at the toe. Sometimes a leather belt was worn around the waist. He holds a mason's mallet in his right hand and an abrasive smoothing stone in his left, for finishing the completed stone block.

The other figure is a wall-painter, who would have specialised in painting the internal walls of palaces, churches, some monastic buildings and so on. He has a brush in one hand and a sea-shell containing paint in the other. His clothing is much the same as the mason, but he has a cap instead of a coif and also wears typical separate leg-coverings called hose of pale green woollen cloth.

Answer 2

Masons of the Middle Ages usually did the same things they do today, working with brick or stone. Medieval masons also carved stone, and many of them were sculptors.