Each Side Table has a stone fieldstone top with 3 removable hairpin stainless steel legs attached to the underside. They are removable using a 1/4″ hex wrench, included with purchase. All of our Side Tables are protected with a permanent food-safe seal for easy cleaning and to prevent staining. Farm-provenance is permanently labeled on the underside of the stone surface.
If you purchase this item, you will receive the set of two tables (made from the same rock) shown in the photos above.
Our Side Tables begin as a freshly “grown” fieldstone that American Stonecraft hand-harvests at one of our working farm partners. Each rock is unique in shape and color, comprised of stone commonly called granite. Artisans craft each Table from scratch in our Massachusetts studio using custom built tools. The stone is transformed from a dull rock into a piece of art with impossibly brilliant color. This color is not the result of an outside product or lacquer, but of skilled grinding and polishing, smoothing away all roughness up to a 10,000 grit. Our Side Tables also retain the natural “live” edge from the stone’s glacial tumbling.
SIZING
The stone surface on each table is approximately 12-14″ in diameter. Each table is 24″ tall and is just under 18 pounds.
NOTE
Variations in color tone should be expected. Fieldstones, being natural, also have minor, non-structural fissures, pocks, scratches, chips, and other superficial flaws that we affectionately call beauty marks.
THE FARM–TO–TABLE STORY
About 8,000 years ago, icy glaciers pushed boulders into the soil of America’s Northeast. As a result, a fresh crop of rocks ‘grow’ each spring when the winter’s freeze-thaw cycles force buried stones upward, a process called granular convection.
In the 1890s, before the railroads opened up rock-free farmlands in other parts of the United States, farmers removing stones from their fields piled them into what eventually became 215,000 miles of stonewalls, a distance greater than from the earth to the moon!
These stonewalls became the folklore of poets like Robert Frost, and the landscape of the Northeast United States. Because clearing rocks is never complete, American Stonecraft partners with working farms to sustainably harvest their fresh rocks and transform them into functional heirlooms. Not only does this endeavor share geology that has never been seen before, but it helps support working farms, preserving open space and protecting the stonewalls that are so iconic to this region.
Like many of us, the founder of American Stonecraft, Gerald Croteau, fell in love with these archaeological stone ruins as a youth. However, he became an economist and founded American Stonecraft in his late 20s after seeing the inside of a fieldstone for the first time. He was amazed at what he had overlooked for so long, and realized that there was a sustainable supply of these rocks that farmers could share at their farmstands. Diamond tools (being a relatively modern invention) revealed amazing colors, patterns, and geologies in the humble New England farm-gathered fieldstone that he wanted to help share with others!
Gerald rolled up his sleeves, spent several years as an independent craftsman touring at local arts and crafts shows, and taught himself how to make a number of fascinating products. We are now a small team of artisans, and each piece is signed by its maker(s), and produced under Gerald’s direct supervision.