Stone Born

Chosen, not made.

Meta-quartzite, curated by ARTO. Three colors, three sizes, half an inch thick, for walls and for floors.

The Rainbow Quarry

One quarry, since the 1930s.

Stone Born comes from the Rainbow Quarry, 920 acres at the base of Mount Potosi outside Goodsprings, Nevada, just beyond Las Vegas. Meta-quartzite has been taken from this ground since the 1930s, for Frank Lloyd Wright projects and for the original Flamingo Hotel.

It does not look like an industrial site. Joshua trees, wild horses, mountain lions. The stone comes out striated and vibrantly colored, and it is quarried for its durability and its colorfastness as much as for how it reads.

It is cut and finished at a nearby factory in Jean, Nevada, where nothing is wasted. Every boulder, cleave and fragment is used. Then it is honed flat at half an inch, and it comes to us.

The material

Quartzite, honed flat.

Meta-quartzite, cut into tile and honed. Half an inch thick in every piece, the 4x4 and the 2x12 alike, for walls and for floors.

Honed, not polished. The face is flat and matte, and the cut edge is left square.

No two pieces match. The veining runs where it ran and the color moves from one piece to the next. A screen cannot show you that. A sample can.

Ask for a sample

The edge
The face

The color

Three names out of one desert.

Same stone, same half inch, same honed face. Only the veining and the ground color change, and each color has a collection of its own.

The sizes

Three footprints. One thickness.

Three sizes, each one in all three colors. Coverage is figured at an eighth inch joint.

4x4 9 pieces to the square foot 0.61 lb a piece
4x12 3 pieces to the square foot 1.85 lb a piece
2x12 6 pieces to the square foot 0.88 lb a piece

Material truth

Rustic Elegance

Rough and refined at the same time. A cut edge where no two pieces are exactly alike. Quarried, cut and honed, with a pattern nobody designed.

It is not a marketing phrase. It is a material truth. Far from perfect, and that is the whole point.