Ashfield Stone Co

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A HISTORY: Ashfield Stone is a mica garnet Schist. Schist is a naturally layered stone having been folded up from ancient seabed and metamorphosed in the slow crush of continents some 400 million years ago. This wonderful and versatile stone has been used traditionally for over 300 years in it’s chisel split or cleft form. All of the oldest gravestones, doorsteps, walls, walkways, patios, doorsteps and hearths in this region have been fashioned from this stone.

In 1991, Jerry wondered what else we could do with this stone besides splitting it for landscaping. He brought a block up to the granite town of Barre, Vermont and found a fabricator willing to cut and polish a piece. The results were stunning. We had some more cut and finished and soon a famous sculptor, Michael Singer from Vermont heard about us and introduced us to the well known Boston Architectural firm of Kallman, McKinnel and White. This firm was looking for a stone to be included in their design for the Beckton Dickinson Corporate Headquarters in Franklin Lakes New Jersey.

This was in the late 80?s. The country was into a recession, the construction business was slow. Johanne had given birth to their daughter and left her teaching position. Jerry had used some of the split stone in a small residential project in Old Deerfield and the clients and their neighbors were very taken with the stone. Slowly, the idea of actually quarrying the unique natural resource in our backyard took hold. In 1988 we went to the town and got our permit to open our quarry. Jerry and one employee learned to read the stone and split it along its natural layers with hammer and chisel.

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