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and required six separate visits to stone yards and quarries in France,
Italy, and Greece. Each stone was carefully selected based on aesthetics,
location, installation method, hardness, finish, and material character-
istics. There are different grades within each specific stone (A1, A2, A3,
etc.) that determine the stone’s hardness, veining, and color; selecting
the appropriate hardness with the ideal applied finish is crucial. From
flamed to combed, hammered to honed, the correct finish affects not
only the look and feel, but also the stone’s performance under different
conditions and, ultimately, its longevity.
During the selection process, we spent some time in Verona, Italy. This
picturesque area is home to a number of large stone yards and fabrication
shops. With product coming from both local quarries and elsewhere, the
massive yards in and around Verona feature acres of stone on site; often,
fabrication shops are attached to those operations. During a tour through
the Antolini Luigi stone yard, for example, we saw stone being processed
at every stage: from bus-sized blocks arriving directly from the quarries to
perfectly cut and polished pieces ready for installation.
Walking through the fabrication shops, one is dwarfed by the scale of
machinery required to move and process the raw material into a finished
product. One of my favorite experiences was at the end of one of our tours;
we were led through fabrication shops, down flights of stairs and through
vault-like doorways, to an underground showroom. A backlit stone bar
greeted us, leading into a series of exquisitely staged rooms depicting an
entire house where every surface and piece of furniture was made of stone.
In the case of the Newport Coast residence, the majority of our stone
selections came from Greece. We worked with a stone supplier on the
island of Mykonos who assisted in the visiting of stone yards and quar-
ries as well as coordinating the purchasing and shipping of what we had
selected. The small town of Mykonos, located on the island by the same
name, is a summer vacation destination operating four months out of
s t ructures
Built to pass the tests of weather and time, the residence sits anchored on site, clad in Fontenay Claire and Combe
Brune Limestone, while guests take in vistas of Newport Harbor and the California coastline through open 2-1/4”
solid mahogany doors and windows.