Thursday 13 April 2017

Taking home a pretty pebble from the beach


Whenever I visit the marble suppliers which is hidden away in the middle of a Wiltshire forest, I find something wonderful which I want to take home with me. The antique pillar on the left is made from a conglomerate marble which comprises of chunks of salmon-pink set in a matrix of dark charcoal black. This picture does not show the true intensity of the colours.

I once seriously considered opening a similar yard, specialising in rare and spectacular stones and marbles, but if I had, I would suffer from the same constant and boring stress of having to supply acres of dead boring material for people to make crass kitchen-tops from as this owner does, just in order to survive.

He has very similar tastes to me, but is mostly pragmatic about how few people appreciate the difference between really stunning bits of marble and material which is just considered adequate under the title of 'marble' by Russian oligarchs choosing the best way of destroying a room in a £25 million house in Knightsbridge. The irony is that money is not an object.

I once discovered seven tons of a very rare mineral called 'Cotham Marble', formed millions of years ago in the mud of a river bed which had - for some reason - dried up by changing course after an earthquake or something.

It comes in thin beds of about 3 inches to 12 inches thick, and when cut can produce pictures of a river bank, lined with trees with the river flowing languidly beneath them. For this reason it is also known as 'Landscape Marble' , though it is not a marble at all, but a limestone.

The owner of the yard came to see it and bought the lot from me - at one pound per pound weight. He still had it years later and ended up selling it at a loss, and I still have a quarter of a ton in my workshop, waiting to be opened up to see what is inside.

Do you remember when last year I spent a lot of time and money importing two tons of Tufa from Canada by sea, having spent even more time trying to find a legal source?

Well when I was rummaging around his yard this week, I discovered two tons of Tufa lying neglected in an overgrown corner, just waiting for someone to recognise it for what it was...

18 comments:

  1. I have never heard of Cotham Marble Tom, nor Tufa, so googled them both, read of and viewed images.
    The former is a beautiful thing and the latter, well, not so aesthetically beautiful. What did you do with the latter?
    Anna :o]

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    1. It was used a lot in the 18th century for rustic follies and grottoes and I was restoring one. Cot ham Marble was generally used in pietra jura inlay.

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  2. I missread and thought that you had once tried to import to tons of tuna from Canada!

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    1. I did import tons of tufa from Canada. You did not misread!

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    2. Tuna, tuna, tuna (sandwich)!

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    3. Oh - it was me who misread! Tuna would have been easier.

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  3. I guess it is a bit of a niche market Tom, but I love the way enthusiasts rave about their particular love.

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    1. Niche is an understatement, Weave. Yes, there are a lot of obsessives around...

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  4. I googled Cotham Marble; really pretty indeed.
    Greetings Maria x

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  5. I have a large (to me) lump of Connemara green marble in my front garden. I found it at the road side in Galway and thought to give it a home.

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    1. Connemara is the oldest marble in the world, geologically speaking. It is no longer possible to get good quality Connemara in large sheets but they still quarry inferior stuff. A friend of mine found some sheets of antique stuff hidden away in a yard and he was able to retire comfortably on the profit.

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    2. P.S. I sent an Irish priest who had a friend in Connemara off on a mission to find antique material once. He was going to finance a street-kids relief mission in Brazil on the profits.

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  6. Oh my word if I had a quid for every time I informed a customer that we had the very thing they had been pulling the city and the internet apart looking for...I could buy a coffee hehe. No really, although the other day I told a guy we had no half inch butt hinges left, only to find them 30 minutes later. The name butt hinge makes me giggle. I'm off to Google Cotham marble.

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  7. I do love stones, marbles and the like, though I can only afford the lesser ones. A friend recently put some stone in her kitchen that had garnets scattered throughout. I loved that. I would like to have lots of semi-precious geodes and crystals. Just so beautiful.

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    1. That sounds like an expensive kitchen! I think garnets are classified as semi-precious aren't they?

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