Keith Phillips with Celtic cross.

The city of Tenino is a speck on the map of southern Washington. On a drive from Seattle to Portland, you’d probably miss it. But from the late 19th century well into the 20th, Tenino (pronounced Tah-NINE-oh) was known as the Sandstone Capital of the West. Builders from California to Montana kept its three quarries humming as they replaced scores of wood structures destroyed by fires with a stronger, more durable material. Tenino sandstone built the east wing of Washington’s first capitol building and Seattle’s first public library, as well as the Northern Pacific Railroad station in Missoula and churches and schools as far south as Stockton, California. The city’s own business district was lined with gracious sandstone buildings.

In the 1920s, the boom began to fade as builders switched to less expensive materials like brick, concrete, and steel. In what some considered the death blow, Tenino’s own school board chose brick over its native stone to build a new high school. The industry fell into decline and never recovered.

Bringing Sandstone Back

Bag of Groceries sculpture at Tenino Market Fresh Supermarket. Carved by Keith Phillips.

Though the industry is gone, Tenino’s sandstone heritage lives on through the work of master stone carver Keith Phillips, 71, who uses traditional hand tools to carve stone quarried from the last of Tenino’s three quarries. At a modest workshop known as The Shed, he is passing on his skills to a new generation of Tenino stone carvers.

Phillips’ handiwork can be spotted throughout the city—in a large mortar and pestle sculpture in front of the pharmacy, an elaborately-carved cross in front of First Presbyterian Church, and a whimsical sandstone bag of groceries next to the local supermarket. He started carving as a hobby in college after relatives gave him some Tenino sandstone. Later, he made stone fireplaces and did other small jobs. When a position as the quarry’s night watchman arose, he seized it, hanging around old-time quarrymen by day to gain pointers about cutting the stone. He learned carving by trial and error and through books.

Around the same time Phillips began receiving commissions for sculptures, the city started taking an interest in its history, commissioning restoration work on its old buildings. “I fell into a situation made in heaven,” Phillips said.

Ed Salerno carves Hard Candy sculpture.

His reputation spread and he soon had more work than he could handle. He has helped restore the state capitol in Olympia, buildings at the University of Washington, a historic museum in Oregon, a lighthouse, and many other buildings, as well as doing sculptures.

These days, Phillips gets help from Ed Salerno, who visited his studio a few years ago after seeing photos of his work at the city’s museum. A graphic designer, Salerno was intrigued by stone carving but had no experience.

Phillips taught him to carve leaves, then letters, and eventually, entire sculptures. “He built my confidence level, always pushing me toward the next thing,” Salerno said.

Dan Miller at The Shed.

“I shared with Ed as much as I could and he’s pretty much on his own now,” Phillips said. The two do projects together and separately, and recently collaborated on traditional “green man” and “green woman” carvings—faces surrounded by leaves—for a Tenino park.

Several years ago, Phillips and Salerno were joined by Dan Miller, who trained as a stone mason in his native England but had trouble finding work in Seattle, where he moved with his American wife. Impressed with a YouTube video showing Phillips making a sundial, he hunted the artisan down, and now works at The Shed two days a week.

“Working with Keith has changed my life,” Miller said. “It’s real stone carving and he’s a master mason. We’re passionate about what we do, and I can learn a lot from him.”

Keeping Traditions Alive

Though the carvers use electric saws and drills to break down the huge blocks of sandstone they get from the quarry, for restoration and carving jobs they use traditional hand tools, including a mallet, a chisel, a stone cutter’s framing square, and a compass. “It makes you appreciate how skilled the medieval masons were,” Miller said.

Ed Salerno, Dan Miller, Colby Russell, and Keith Phillips.

Softer and easier to carve than granite or marble, sandstone is well-suited to the old instruments. Though there are slight color variations, ranging from bluish-gray to tan, its texture is smooth and uniform. “It has the evenness of white bread, with no bumps,” Phillips said. “You can carve an angel’s face and it will come out with no blemishes.”

In addition to their carving and restoration work, Phillips and Salerno teach stone carving classes at The Shed. Salerno also has a new apprentice, 17-year-old Colby Russell, who is the great-great-great grandson of the founder of one of the local quarries. Like many of the city’s residents, Colby wants its sandstone tradition to live on. “Even if I don’t make carving a career goal, it’s something to hold onto for future generations,” he said.

“It’s important for young people to be exposed to traditional, age-old architecture,” Phillips said. “So many beautiful old buildings that should have been preserved have been torn down. That kind of thinking can change if there are more people like Dan, Ed, and me.”

TAGS:  sandstone carving feel good inspire historical teresa meek

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Luxury Dog Houses & Kids Playhouses

For many of us, our homes are our castles. Shouldn’t we want the same for our dogs? Companies like Le Petit Maison are giving our furry friends their own custom-designed dog houses, complete with natural stone details.

The Laguna Dog House, designed and built by Le Petit Maison, features natural stone landscaping, a stone floor and stairs.

Both Allen Mowrer and Michelle Pollack of Le Petit Maison love natural stone and try to incorporate as much into their designs as their clients will let them. “We love to use it in all sorts of creative ways,” admits Pollack. While the company’s focus are custom playhouses, the duo has completed a fair amount of custom dog houses, too. Their clients range from celebrities and high-profile people to everyday families who simply want a fun house for their dog or child, says Pollack.

No feature is too large or too small to add to a custom project and client requests everything from air conditioning to climate control.

“We find that almost all of our clients love the entire design and creation process with both the playhouses and dog houses,” says Pollack.

Typical clients request a replica of their home, or a modified style they create for them. To get started, Le Petit Maison needs basic information from the client such as size, where the dog house will be located on their property and their budgeted price range. “We usually help them with the style, since many times we copy a person’s main house and or create a style from scratch for them,” notes Pollack.

The French Chateau, designed and built by Le Petit Maison, features a slate porch and path.

Some natural stone features found in their dog houses include stone landscaping, floors, stairs, a slate porch and path and all-marble flooring. Custom-designed dog houses range from $5,000 to $15,000 and up.

Sheena McKnight, purchasing director for Zbranek & Holt Custom Homes, a luxury design+build custom builder specializing in high-end residential construction, oversaw the company’s first dog house design for a charity event last year which also won a couple of awards for its innovative design.

The company was approached by an Austin-based custom dog house design show and charity fundraiser called Barkitecture. Hosted by Animal Lovers of Austin, funds raised through the silent auction of one-of-a-kind dog houses created by Austin’s best and brightest architects, designers and builders benefit local animal non-profit organizations.

McKnight says that Zbranek & Holt Custom Homes only builds “people houses” but admits they could be persuaded to include a matching dog house with a project.

Barkitecture’s award-winning Mini Modern Mansion, designed and built by Zbranek & Holt Custom Homes, features a contemporary design complete with a thin stone veneer on the front facade of the house to give it a realistic look. “The stone gave it the curb appeal we were aiming for,” says Sheena McKnight, who oversaw the company’s first dog house design for the charity event last year.

The team had a great time participating in last year’s event and to have helped raise money for a great cause. They’re returning this year and while she wasn’t willing to divulge their design, she says they have some really unique ideas up their sleeve. They’re motived as they took home Best in Show and People’s Choice award last year and hoping for a repeat this year.

The winning Mini Modern Mansion features a contemporary design, perfect for the modern dog. The lattice work provides ventilation while the solid walls give your furry baby privacy to relax. A ramp provides access to the rooftop deck.

Their object, McKnight says, was to build a doghouse that resembled a real house, but was designed with the function of a doggie lifestyle in mind. Natural stone also played a role in the overall design.

“We incorporated a thin stone veneer on the front facade of the house to give it a realistic look,” she says. “The stone gave it the curb appeal we were aiming for.”

They also incorporated a solar light, which was both a functional and aesthetic element.

Bentley, the furry model in the images, is no stranger to posh digs. He’s McKnight’s sidekick and has been following her to work his entire life. “He’s the Z & H office mascot and doesn’t realize he’s not a human,” she admits. He and his younger brother will be returning to Barkitecture this year to make their case again for top dog.

Bentley, office mascot for Zbranek & Holt Custom Homes, models the winning project.

While the company doesn’t specialize in doghouse design and construction, there are a few things she’d recommend clients consider if they decide to embark on this kind of project. “We recommend sustainable materials that can withstand the elements,” advises McKnight. “Be sure to waterproof it as best you can, since water can be problematic.”

What some homeowners may not consider when it comes to designing a dog house with natural stone is that stone, even a thin veneer as was used for last year’s project, is extremely heavy. “It makes transporting the doghouse very cumbersome,” says McKnight. To make it easier to move around, the team incorporated locking wheels into the design. It was one of the best design decision they made, adds McKnight.

While the company doesn’t design dog houses as a one-off project, McKnight does wonder if their continued involvement in Barkitecture might generate cause clients to consider adding on a custom dog house on existing or upcoming projects. The dog house they designed and built in 2016 would cost somewhere around $1,500 – $2,500, says McKnight. “It was auctioned for around $850 though, so the new owner certainly got a deal!”

Unique Wedding Venues | Stone Fabrication Shop

Mother Nature has a strange way of uniting communities sometimes. When Hurricane Matthew cut off power across Raleigh, North Carolina, Jordan Luongo wasn’t sure how her wedding guests were going to make it to her wedding reception on October 8.

Up until the morning of their wedding, Luongo was convinced they’d still be able to host the wedding in her parent’s backyard. Reality hit when her mother walked her to the backyard and she noticed a river running through the grass in the tent area. Then they lost power inside their home.

“Roads were getting shutting down,” Luongo remembers. As she was getting her hair done, lights were flickering. She had her make-up done in the dark. At that point, she realized, her wedding day was “a big maybe.”

Her mother called her friend, Laura Grandlienard, founder of ROCKin’teriors, to ask if she had any recommendations for a reception space since nothing was open or available. Grandlienard offered her design studio and fabrication shop, one of the greenest stone fabrication shops in the region with a 7,000 square foot facility complete with natural stone slabs as the backdrop. While she’d never hosted a wedding reception in her space, she knew her space could handle it, having hosted her grand opening eight years earlier and various events through the years.

Six hours later, ROCKin’teriors would be transformed with the help of Luongo’s family and guests, their wedding planner, the caterer, DJ, and ROCKin’teriors staff who came in to lend a helping hand.

“In the rain, we moved slabs and made it into a walkway,” Grandlienard fondly recalls. The cutting table, decorated with mums and lanterns, became a showpiece as it held the wedding cake. Candles throughout the space lent a romantic atmosphere as it bounced off the natural stone. Slabs of quartzite became the serving tables.

Luongo planned on having a rustic themed wedding and while she was disappointed that her outdoor wedding venue had to change, she doesn’t have any regrets about having her reception at ROCKint’eriors.

“It was natural and beautiful, in a rough kind of way,” Luongo says. She loved how the stone slabs glittered from the candles throughout the space. Her wedding pictures, with stone surrounding them and their guests, are “really cool.”

Grandlienard doesn’t have any immediate plans to open her space as a wedding site, but being a valued member of the community is very much part of her business’s DNA. It’s also paying off. A few weeks after the wedding, one of the wedding guests returned. She told Grandlienard that throughout the evening she’d been in awe of how beautiful the space was and she kept staring at a particular stone. She couldn’t get it out of her mind so she returned to ask if she and her team could help her with her basement kitchen.

That’s the kind of power and appeal natural stone has on people, Grandlienard says, and why community is very much part of her business. “It’s not just tending to the needs at hand, but also [opening the doors to] folks who might not have come in on their own and get inspired by power of Mother Nature,” she adds.

She’d once heard someone say one of the best designers is Mother Nature. That’s certainly apropos given the beauty of natural stone. In this case, it took on another layer of importance since the power of Mother Nature is undeniable.

Rock Picking | Glacial Stones In The Midwest

Harvesting stone at Still Life Farm in Hardwick, MA.

For one man, rocks have become a cash crop. Gerald Croteau grew up around the stone walls that are so popular on farms throughout the Northeast. He claims there are more miles of stone walls in New England than miles between the Earth to the moon. While farmers harvest produce or let their animals graze on the fields, Croteau and his team are busy searching for field stones, ripe for the picking, to make into food slabs, bowls, and coasters.

Stone walls are a pretty distinct piece of New England’s landscape. Even Robert Frost wrote about them in his poem “Mending Wall.”

“The science of it is that the stones have a different density than the dirt and the soil, so if you’re farming, year after year  you’re moving these rocks out of your way because they slowly but surely will rise to the surface,” he explains. “This is why the farmers in New England built so many stone walls. Not because they were particularly interested in building stone walls, but because they had to do it to move these rocks out of their way.”

While glaciers left small and large boulders scattered throughout the topsoil many years ago, it’s the freeze-thaw cycle of winter seasons that perpetually pushes stones back up. The work of clearing stones from the land is never-ending.

Turning stones into housewares.

Croteau’s grandfather was a stone mason and while he was always fascinated by stone walls, he never realized the beauty within them. That is, until he visited some families while working abroad and saw the inside of field stone for the first time. He discovered that while these incredible metamorphic stunning boulders were grey on the outside, they were colorful and vibrant inside.

It was then that he realized this would be a great business opportunity, in which he could use his economics experience and education. “I started American Stonecraft to work with farms to add value to these ordinary rocks,” he says.

American Stonecraft is based in Lowell, Massachusetts, and currently partners with about 75 farms all over New England to pick ordinary-looking stones and boulders which will then be transformed into a line of slabs for serving, cooking, coasters, and other tabletop accessories. Croteau and his team have developed a keen eye for the kind of stones and boulders that might have beautiful patterns within them. They pick the rocks, haul them to their workshop where machines help craft them into pieces of functional, food-safe products that the farmers and other retailers across the country can sell.

Each finished product shows information about the farm where the stone originated.

Growing Rocks

The irony of growing rocks on precious farmland isn’t lost on Croteau, or the farmers with whom he works to cultivate his crop.

“In our store at Boston Public Market, our tag line hangs on a sign that says: ‘From a land that grows rock comes the story of farmers who battle them.’ If you ask farmers across the board here in New England, they do joke about it,” admits Croteau.

New England farmers have been battling rocks on their land for generations. Like all farmers, they’ve learned to diversify their offerings in order to maximize the return on their investment. New England farms tend to be smaller in size compared to what most people might think. They’re not the thousands of acres of land that grow corn in the Midwest. As a result, they’re often vertically integrated, meaning they not only produce crops, they also sell them, usually at farmers markets. Selling American Stonecraft products, created from stones collected from their own land, allows farmers to not only add to their merchandising mix, but to extend their selling cycle.

Farmers are rarely ever not busy, but during the winter months, outdoor vegetable production is over and harvest time has ended. American Stonecraft products, though, are not only year-round, they sell particularly well during the holiday season when people are looking for unique gifts with a story.

Finished food slab.

And Croteau has plenty of stories. The first farm he began working with is called Ugly Udder Farm. The stone from the farm is used to make their most popular product in the line: a food slab.

To hear Croteau tell the story, Ugly Udder Farm acquired the name after a farmer began rescuing goats that a breeder didn’t want because their udders weren’t pretty. She was making cheese and soaps from goat’s milk and since all of her goats had “ugly” udders, she named her farm after her goat’s ugly udders.

“To me that just sums it up,” laughs Croteau. “It’s all about telling stories and being memorable and I think she just did a really good job with that.”

The food slab that was created using stone from her farm comes with a label on the bottom of the product that includes the American Stonecraft label, the farm from where the stone was sourced, and a website link to the farm’s story.

Supporting Farmers and Shopping Their Values

Stone walls and the story behind American Stonecraft’s line of slabs, coasters, and other tabletop accessories appeal to so many people because it reminds them of their own childhood or New England history, according to Croteau. He stays connected to his customers by working at the Boston Public Market, a year-round market with about 40 vendors who sell local produce, fish, and artisanal items, one or two shifts a week.

Finished food slab from Red Apple Farm in Phillipston, MA.

“It’s just a lot of fun to meet people that discover us and have grown up with a stone wall in their backyard, or grown up farming, or just understand this part of our history and then realize how it checks off, they literally say these things, it checks off all the boxes that I have,” Croteau says, in reference to a list of things that touches them.

“People nowadays are such conscious consumers,” he adds. By buying items from American Stonecraft, they feel like they’re supporting the kind of world they want to live in. He has repeat customers who often come back to buy gifts because the products are not only beautiful, unique and one-of-a-kind, but they’re supporting family farms that mean so much to them.

You’re standing in the showroom, temporarily stunned by the sights before you. Slabs of natural stone are arranged in long aisles like beckoning, stone-clad hallways. As you wander down the aisle you pause to absorb the differences in each slab. Some are bright and sparkly, while others are gritty and moody. Some are sleek and serene, and others are vibrant and full of life. The idea of shopping for your countertop had sounded fun and easy, but now you realize this is going to be a tough choice.

Where to start? You’ve got three factors to consider: price, performance, and looks. Price is a personal decision. Some people start out with a firm budget and then throw that out the window when they meet their perfect stone. Others see stone as an investment and know that it’s worth it for them. There are also regional differences in prices. But I’m a geologist, and while only you know your budget, I can be more helpful when it comes to sorting out how stones look, feel, and behave. Wrapping your head around all the variables can be daunting. That’s why your stone personality matters!

Is marble right for me?

O’ marble, how we love thee. As beautiful as it is, marble etches from acids and can get scratched from metal utensils. But hey, it’s gorgeous right? The lust for marble is emotionally complex, so I boiled it down to this simple flow chart.

Okay, so I’m not compatible with marble. But I want marble. Is there a way around that? Sealer? Saran wrap? Polishing out the etch marks? Following guests around with a dishtowel?

Trying to make marble something it isn’t is a recipe for discontent. Why not choose a stone that will work for you just the way it is?

– Quartzite is a natural metamorphic rock that in some cases looks a lot like marble. However, since it’s made out of quartz, it does not etch and is hard enough to withstand everyday kitchen abuse. Look for well-known quartzites like White Macaubus, Sea Pearl, or Taj Mahal.

– There are also some beautiful white granites. Check out Aspen White, Colonial White, or White Supreme.

Alrighty, so we’ve resolved the dilemma of marble vs. not marble. Let’s move on to other factors of your stone personality.

Please describe how you feel about dust and crumbs hanging around on your countertop.

My skin is crawling just thinking about it. There shalt be no dust and no crumbs in my kitchen. Shudder.

I admire your commitment to cleanliness. In that case, you may want to steer away from multicolored patterns, which tend to hide dust and crumbs. It’s hard to clean what you can’t see. Black, on the other hand, reveals every particle on it. Perfect for the OCD among us.

The “lived in” state of my kitchen just helps my friends feel better about their own cleaning habits.

Yeah, we’re all human and most kitchens aren’t meant to be showplaces. If you are somewhat lax on your cleaning routine, then avoid all-black stones, which seem to amplify dirt and dust. Also, some light-colored granites like Kashmir White or River White are more porous than other colors of granite. These stones do best with prompt housekeeping and regular sealing.

You might like a busier granite pattern because it can make crumbs nearly invisible on the countertop. Is that a good thing or is it just gross? Only you can say.

Where do you get your design inspiration from?

I lean toward safe choices. What works for others will probably work for me.

There are many tried and true stones to choose from, and there’s a reason they are so popular. Consider granites like Virginia Mist, Santa Cecilia, or Bianco Romano.

I like what’s trending in magazines, at tradeshows, and at design centers.

Fusion quartzite. Photo courtesy of Arizona Tile.

What’s hot right now? Quartzite and marble.

I buck the trends! Give me something that no one else has.

Lucky for you, rocks come in a vast array of colors and patterns. You’ll be the only one in your book club with options like these:

Black Fossil – a limestone slab that has preserved an ancient sea, brimming with life

Fusion Quartzite – an impressionistic swirl of soft colors

Marinace – a sedimentary rock formed in a cobbled riverbed

I want something that doesn’t even look like it came from this planet.

Iron Red – Geologists call this rock ‘banded iron formation’ and it formed so early in Earth’s history, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere.

Sea Pearl quartzite. Photo courtesy of Arizona Tile.

Blue Onyx – This slab is made by assembling geodes that are dyed blue, so it’s not completely natural. But it definitely resembles alien life forms!

What colors do you like?

Bright colors, sunshine, glitter, and unicorns.

Alaska White granite

White marble

Crystal White quartzite

Fantasy Brown marble. Photo courtesy of Arizona Tile.

Sea Pearl quartzite

Warm and homey. I want a color that smells like bread baking in the oven.

Imperial Gold granite

Juparana Colombo Gold granite

Fantasy Brown marble

At the end of a long workday dealing with my ridiculous bosses, I want a stone that is as dark and moody as I feel.

Nero Mist/Black Mist granite

Peacock Verde granite

Peacock Verde granite. Photo courtesy of M S International.

Pietra Grey marble

What about patterns? Which mood suits you?

Calm, serene, tranquil

Most limestones and marbles offer subdued, soft colors. Check out Pietra Cardoso limestone or Calacatta marble.

Granites tend to be flecked with minerals of different colors. But a few offer uniform color and texture, such as Absolute Black, Esmeralda

Green, Virginia Mist.

Virginia Mist granite. Photo courtesy of M S International.

Lively, flowing

Metamorphic granites (called gneiss) are characterized by swirled bands of color. You might like Silver Cloud, Cosmos, or Atacama Black.

Soapstone has flowing movement combined with a soft texture. Best of both worlds, perhaps?

Insane. Riotous. Dance party.

Who needs coffee when your countertop can jolt you awake every morning?

Blue Bahia – Blue rocks are rare, but this one is the real deal. The blue color is due to the mineral sodalite, which is naturally blue.

Magma Gold – This metamorphic rock smolders with golden warmth

Verde Fantastico granite. Photo courtesy of M S International.

from the mineral muscovite, which has a distinctive glittery look to it.

Verde Fantastico – This rock formed as lava that erupted on the ocean floor, then seawater reacted with the rock and created the green color and pattern.

At the end of the day, I just want a kitchen countertop that I can:

Not worry about. If I want to crawl off to bed with wine spilled on the island, so be it.

Your basic, bulletproof stone will fit right in. You might like Blue Pearl granite, Sea Pearl quartzite, or Ubatuba granite.

Feel good about. I try to be conscientious in my purchases.

Do you want to ease the environmental footprint of your countertop? You can use stones from nearby quarries. For American customers, consider Danby marble, Barre Gray granite (both from Vermont), or Silver Cloud granite from Georgia. A directory of Stones of North America offers a map view so you can see what stones are available near you.

As of 2014, there is a certification process for sustainably-sourced natural stone that recognizes careful consideration to the environment, energy use, a safe workplace, and fair labor practices. So far, two quarries in the US have completed the certification process: Coldspring and TexaStone Quarries.

Another option is to use remnant slabs. Most fabrication shops offer leftover slabs, many of which are large and perfect and ready to be used in your kitchen or bathroom.

Show off to my neighbors. (Okay, I admit it, and my sister in law.)

Want something stunning? Check out bookmatched slabs of a stone with dramatic movement. Consider some of the vivid quartzites like Blue Louise/Van Gogh, or fluid-looking gneiss like Rocky Mountain.

So, have you decided yet? Probably not, but don’t rush things. Enjoy the process of visiting slab yards, browsing through different stones, learning about them, and imagining the possibilities of bringing them into your home. It’s a difficult decision, but also one of the most fun.

Pete the Miner | Natural Stone Sculptures

Pete “the Miner” Incardona loves stone and is living the life he loves harvesting rare minerals in the Arizona desert.

In 1993, Pete Incardona, after concluding a movie role with Steven Seagal, first imagined a gallery that featured hand-carved stone and historic mining artifacts. By 1994, that vision would finally take shape as Sunrise Mine Enterprises. You see, Pete (known as Pete the Miner), like many artists, was destined at birth to carve stone. “I was a miner my whole life,” said Pete, “but my family was always into artwork. My dad and grandfather both worked marble in New York and Chicago.”

Slabs and boulders of onyx from the Mayer quarry. “We never stop moving,” said Pete. “I’ll look at a rock and see a table. I’ll even keep the ends and make abstracts. Nothing gets wasted.”

It took a series of interesting events for Pete to accomplish his dream to work stone. “In the old days, I did a lot of bit work in Western movies that most people never saw. Like in the old television days with Burt Reynolds and Spanky Stanger, I dressed like those guys all the time, with my big boots and Carhartts. I always looked that way. So I was up in Alaska around 1993 looking for stone. My girlfriend was working at a gold mine in Fairbanks, and they were filming Steven Seagal’s On Deadly Ground when I walked onto the set looking the way I looked. They didn’t know I had a background in that kind of stuff, and they said, ‘Hey, we want you in the movie!’ And I just said, ‘Okay, fine!’

“We did cutting scenes, table scenes and we blew up oil wells. One of the props didn’t work, and I held onto a steel beam 15 feet in the air for five minutes until everybody got out of the way. I then let it go. They couldn’t believe that, but I’m a working guy. My leg did hurt, though. So that’s how I wound up with Mr. Seagal making $300 dollars a day. That was pretty good money, back in ’93.” On Deadly Ground was Pete’s last movie. His love for working stone has served to discourage him from taking other acting jobs, even turning down an offered role in a Mel Gibson movie. “Rock is my love. It’s gotten me out of troubles my whole life, and it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

Returning to Arizona, Pete traded a building for an old mining claim in Aguila, Arizona — a gold mine dating back to the late 1800s. “I had enough of what I was doing, and I was going to go there and just play with rocks and dig gold. My girlfriend and I were living out there in a cabin and driving a 1947 Chevy truck. When, lo and behold, we discovered sculpture-grade black marble in the mine.”

Arizona, Here We Come

About the time that Pete discovered the black marble, he also passed on a chance to do a Kevin Costner movie (Wyatt Earp) and moved to Wickenburg. “I was cutting everything with a 36-inch drop saw, and we just got busier and busier and busier. I then realized I needed a bigger saw.

“In those days, one of my mentors was Bob Byler. Bob had designed the rotary lawnmower. Jean was his wife, and her maiden name was Borg. Jean was related to the Borg family, as in Borg-Warner, the transmission people.

“So being an old, gray-haired guy like he was, I hung out with him for six or seven years, during which time we built our own 5-foot saw powered by an old UPS truck with a Chevy engine. It could cut 26 inches deep and 5 feet long, and it was portable. I could then do my own custom cutting of fountains, tabletops and wine racks — you name it! To this day, everybody gets a kick out of it.”

“I do bases for a lot of famous artists,” Pete explained. “I did one base that was 6,500 pounds, and had to drive it a mile and a half through a golf course with a loader carrying this thing with a $350,000 bronze on top of it. You don’t want to make any mistakes, if you know what I mean!”

Roughly 10 years ago, ABC (American Broadcasting Company) saw Pete at an art show and he wound-up doing eight seasons on Extreme Home Makeover as a rock artist. “Home Makeover would give me a week’s notice, and we’d go all over the place. It was great helping everybody, plus people would see my stone on national television. That was pretty cool, and it was go, go, go!”

That go, go, go translated into go find a bigger place.

Theme Park, Studio, Art Gallery and Museum

Pete’s new, larger workshop was all of the above. Pete continued: “We moved north to Yarnell, Arizona about four years ago. Yarnell is where those 19 firefighters were killed a few years ago. I bought a 1940s gas station and made it look like a mining camp. It’s all timber walled with a museum section, plus all my stones. I use a lot of the old mining steel with my artwork. Very few people do that. I’ll take the old mine rails and make legs for my tables, or old crushers, flywheels, jaws, nuts and bolts from the 1800s and 1900s and include them in my artwork. People just love that, because they are unique and can’t be duplicated. So we do a lot of that kind of stuff.”

Scattered about the property are mining ore buckets, mine cars and rails, and walking in the front door of the 65 x 50 x 14-foot tall building is like walking into a mining site, said Pete.

“We are about 90 percent complete. There’s an old outbuilding that we’re making look like a mine. You’ll be able to walk out the back of the main building, though a timber-reinforced mining tunnel, into the mine. Onlookers, through two glass windows, can then see our saw actually working. It has a big derrick over the top of it that raises it up. You then release any air, turn the valve loose and it falls slowly while cutting. I got the idea for this from ABC, and got the idea to use glass from a shop in Alaska. A guy was making bowls by hand behind glass, so the people watching knew it was the real deal. He couldn’t make them fast enough. Everything these days is done by computer, so it’s pretty cool to see some old man busting his knuckles and fingers doing something. We use no computers or CNC machines for production — everything is done by hand and hand tools.

“So that’s what we’re trying to do. Make a functioning museum/art gallery with people watching the saw and the people who are actually doing the work.”

Pete shows off one of his free-form sculptures, carved from a scrap of the black marble from his stockpile. As with the Mayer quarry onyx, even small (unflawed) pieces can be valuable.

Life is Great, Business is Good, and People are Wonderful

“Every Tuesday we jump in the big truck and go get a load of rock,” said Pete. “We’ll dig the boulders right out of the ground with excavators. The best rock I have is the Seven Springs Cave Creek onyx out of the northern Arizona area. The old man that ran it died, and the Forest Service took the property back, and it will never be quarried again. I got the last 300 tons available of that stone.

“Then, they widened the road to Prescott through the original Mayer onyx quarry, which is very famous–the biggest deposit was 260 acres, 65 feet thick, sitting in a collapsed river bed. Fortunately, I was in the right position at the right time and managed to get 1,000 tons of that rock.

“I have all the official paperwork from the original owner Miss Mayer herself, dating back to 1879. People love that, because they’re getting a piece of history. I’ll make them block size or make anything you can imagine. Like I tell them on the phone, it’s my imagination and your checkbook — how crazy do you want to get?

“A lot of people buy my black marble so they can carve it themselves. It’s beautiful and rings like a bell. You should see the way it shines. We’ll polish it to 3,500 grit and it’s still saying, ‘Give me more!’ We only use the cream of the crop. If it’s flawed, I’ll sell it as a landscape boulder. So with these three stones, I pretty much have a lock on the Arizona rock that I use for all my projects.”

Located along Highway 89 in Yarnell, Arizona, Pete the Miner’s stone yard is an ocean of locally quarried onyx and black marble. “You can’t be running all around thinking you’re the best thing in the world because you’re selling rock. Because you know what? It’s not easy turning rock into hamburger, but that’s what stone artists do. You get to eat, making money, doing stone. Once again… you’re just selling rock. Think about it!”
—Pete the Miner

More Homemade Equipment and Recent Work

About seven or eight years ago, Pete decided to build a core drill, but not just any core drill. “I can spend a month carving lizards and dragons by hand, but functional art always wins. So once again, I employed Bob Byler’s brain (the machine genius), and we built the whole machine, including the hydraulic rams, which are powered by a Kubota street sweeper engine. It is 16 feet tall and will core 14-inch diameter holes 48 inches deep. It additionally has six feet of horizontal travel and four feet of sideways travel, so I can drill out stone ponds from one rock. It will also drill bathtubs, sinks, columns and pedestals. All the Italians that we know in the business looked at the drill and said, “Where did you get this?”

In the middle of his hard work with stone, Pete found himself working hard on another front.

Pete said, “I’ve been fighting prostate cancer for the last four years. It had kind of kicked my rear for the first year, but I only slowed down for seven days! I have gained a wonderful lady in my life now, too. She was a nurse in the emergency room, but she retired and now works with me.”

So what’s Pete’s secret for his recovery? “I don’t drink or smoke but do eat lots of olive oil, take lots of vitamins and work my butt off. So between those things and loving what I’m doing, I’m okay. If you keep your immune system strong, you can keep up with doing a lot of stuff, but if people are yanking and tugging on you mentally, that’s no good. I had a cancer doctor that said to me, ‘Keep working, Pete.’ Some cancer patients where I take my treatments are younger than me, and they can’t even move. I could carry most of them around the parking lot, even at my age of 67.

“There’s a lot to (beating) that cancer stuff, but you can’t let it throw you — you gotta keep moving. Luckily for me, I enjoy my work, and the work shows it. I’m not the best carver in the world, but I’m there, the stone is real and the people just love it.”

Pete was recently asked to carve a memorial honoring the Granite Mountain 19 (the 19 city of Prescott firefighters that died in 2013), but said that the memorial will probably be cast in bronze. He estimated that a stone project of this magnitude would take him about five years to complete.

Pete doesn’t work in bronze, but he has done hundreds of bases and pedestals for bronze artists.

“People show up, walk through the yard and select their stone. We then make it real. We give out lots of brochures at the art shows, and Yarnell is over 4,000 feet in the air and it is cool up here. So in the summer, they’ll come up. I’ll take them out the back door and give them the VIP treatment. I’ll talk just as long with the guy that pulls up with the ’47 Studebaker as the guy that pulls up with the Maserati. That’s just what you’re supposed to do, and people like real people.”

Photos provided by Pete Incardona.
This article was previously published in the June 2016 edition of The Slippery Rock Gazette.

For more information about Pete or Sunrise Mine Enterprises, Google or search YouTube for “Pete the Miner.”

The story of how natural stone morphed from a material used almost exclusively in commercial construction to a staple for kitchen countertops, bathroom vanities, and other home applications is a fascinating one. In “The History of Man and Stone,” you will learn the history of the natural stone industry and how one of nature’s true wonders has become an affordable option for almost any commercial, residential, or renovation project.