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22411 – Set of 5 Charcuterie Boards from Cider Hill Farm – Amesbury MA
$265.00
1 in stock
Hi, I’m Gerald, the artisan and founder of the craft studio American Stonecraft ®. Thank you for exploring a unique Charcuterie Board Set I handcrafted in Lowell, Massachusetts. This is an extension of my best-selling, signature work, the individual Charcuterie Board, but in a larger sculptural format. Here, I reconstruct the single stone I started with. The set came from the place listed in the title, and the exact dimensions are found in the sizing tab below. Each wood slat is 3″ wide for scale.
It is a set of food-safe boards for serving and grazing. Cheeses, charcuteries, honeycomb, nuts and dried fruit, cakes and pastries, and countless delights will be right at home. It is also a trivet, safe for a hot casserole or candles. One friend set them below the table settings as colorful chargers to accent white porcelain dishes. The stone will also protect wood from the water rings that weep through clay pots. Another friend with vintage wooden speakers used hers below a beautiful spider plant that colorfully extended its shoots. The silicone feet had just the right grip, and didn’t rattle from the vibrations. Or you might use it as a non-absorbent cutting board for deboning seafood or trimming meat. Consider pre-chilling the stone in the freezer, or slightly warming the stone (below 125°), depending on the dish and season. Another idea related to its thermal properties, is that the mass of your room temperature stone will speed the defrosting of frozen food, particularly if you sandwich the item between multiple boards.
I think of each Charcuterie Board Set as functional sculpture, and the multiple boards will offer serving space when desired, or a pleasing sculpture otherwise. It would also make a great gift for a family, possibly even with matching the number of boards in the set with the number of people in the household. Chinese culture considers stones to be concentrations of energy and life, objects of contemplation and worship, microcosms of heaven and earth. (Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth, 1986). I wholeheartedly agree!
1 in stock
ORIGINS
I harvested this single stone by hand from the farm or place listed in the title. This is my favorite part of the process, an opportunity to meet farmers, and share artifacts from land that grows rocks.
As the backstory introduces, my work therefore celebrates the overlooked, and the in-the-way. Wherever this sculpture goes next, may its spirit of triumph over obscurity, live on in its next home, and for generations to come.
PROCESS
Back at the studio, in Lowell, Massachusetts, I sawed multiple cross sections, perfectly parallel, in sequence, from an irregular three dimensional stone. After that, I carefully ground the newly created discs to a highly polished and non-absorbent finish. That requires 11 stages of wet diamond grinding with a hand tool for each board, and leaves the stone permanently colorful. Next, I let the stone dry for one day, and came back the next, to mark its sourcing origin story, and apply a food safe resin and chemical (EU tested) to the top surface and sides. This penetrates any microscopic pores, making it virtually stain proof, and then stamp the Registered Trademark of my studio, and maker's signature, onto the underside with permanent ink. This ink will not run upon washing with soap and water. After this label, I affix silicone bumpers with two types of glue to ensure that the silicone feet will stay attach and will withstand temperatures up to 125° and are safe to freeze.
The five digit number in the title is its serial number, and I’ve digitally archived that record of creation, for permanent artistic provenance. Each piece of my work will outlive myself, and maybe someday our descendants will trace your order number or this serial number, back to us. However today, I look to share this artifact with its first collector, someone who appreciates the finest in handmade American craft. Not because we need, but because we can, and we do.
ART
I've heard art described as an object that invites the observer, to ponder and ask questions about the object’s existence. In a world of rigid geometry, this art celebrates the irregular shape of an organism. It also embeds other stories for the curious to unravel.
FORM
Marvel at the reconstructed set. The elegant utility of unfurling multiple pieces when needed, and the puzzle of reconstructing the original form when its service returns to aesthetic mode. Hold the whole set or a single board in your hand, touch its smooth top, its natural edges. Look deeply into the now cooled and solidified crystal matrix and slowly take in the millions of years of history embodied in that geology. If the earth were a tree, her stones would be flowers. That they will bloom for thousands of years to come, is not lost on us, those who love stone, and seek it out.
Now, turn one of the boards over, and see the maker’s brand, where he hand-gathered it from, and notice that the silicone feet tell a new story about its useful options. Those feet took years of practice and testing to ensure they wouldn’t bump off accidentally, and survive washing and chilling in the freezer. A bucolic accent? A tray for plants to protect your favorite furniture? A trivet for a candle, plant, or hot casserole right out of the oven? Want more ideas of how to use your new board? Here are 101 inspiring ways to use your American Stonecraft ® charcuterie boards.
How is it even possible to make such a set of boards? Why haven’t I seen such a beautiful sculptural form before? Would this be a treasured gift if I had a loved one who had not yet read these words or seen these pictures. Someone opening the compostable, plastic and ink free box, relying on the included story booklet, a personalized gift note, and the object itself.
MAKER
I’ve been mastering the craft of stonecutting and polishing for over 10 years. Like an iceberg, much of my journey to bring you this charcuterie board set, remains unseen. Yet I’ve chosen this road less travelled, because I saw on this horizon, a story I needed to metaphysically ‘write.’ This sculpture is a breadcrumb trail of my time.
Repeating these parallel cuts, perfectly each time, each 7/16” apart, and then grinding that slice to bring out a honed polish, requires an obsession with building and maintaining an independent studio to work from. Controlling water, diamond tools, electricity, contaminated air, and securing the pieces in fixtures, remains some of that iceberg below the surface. Experiments, revisions, and past sales, are some of the ingredients I’ve included in my quest to create this small victory of what is possible to offer you now.
I collect as much of my own work, as possible, because I love and adore each piece. Now though, I put a price next to this object, because I hope to share it with someone new. I work from a beautiful rented studio in Lowell, Massachusetts, and you are welcome to visit and inspect the item in person. Or click here online, and I will personally wrap and mail it to you as quickly as possible. Thank you for supporting the life of an independent craftsman, one that I am grateful for, and am proud to tell you about.
GIFTING
I believe my Charcuterie Board Set represents my most impressive work, making not only a unique gift, but one that may be the absolutely perfect eco-friendly gift for the conscious consumer. A celebration of irony, and a marvel to look at. Either for yourself, as an indulgence of your exquisite tastes, or for someone special, who values the outdoors, open space, and the wonders of nature. Someone who knows the importance of agriculture, and the sight of a barn. Someone who appreciates external beauty, and digs for the inner stories below the surface. Or as a wedding gift, where two people vow to be each other’s rock. Simply poetic.
- Charcuterie Board Sets Include Hot-Iron Branded Gift Boxes, a Customized Gift Note (if requested), a 6”x6” Multi-Page Story Booklet (printed on recycled paper), and a Provenance Tag with Serial #
- Gift Box closed with rubber band for easily peaking inside prior to gifting
- 100% eco-friendly packaging and sourcing, compostable, and plastic free
- Outstanding wedding gift, housewarming gift for new homeowner, host or hostess gift, graduation gift (geologist or earth scientist for sure), retirement gift (with or without engraving), anniversary gift (stone is the traditional 50th wedding anniversary material), or for religious celebrations like Christmas or Hanukkah.
- Appropriate for ages 6-96
SIZING
- Click the Sizing Tab for size, weight and related details. For scale, each wooden slat in photographs is 3" wide.
- All product photos of a particular product type (ie Charcuterie Boards or Coasters) are photographed from the same distance, and with the same focal lens. Therefore, you are welcome to compare size and shape from listing to listing as they are a representative scale. Coasters and Trivets are simply cropped in tighter, so you see fewer slats in the standard crop.
CARE
When it is time to clean the boards, simply hand wash it in the sink with warm water and dish soap. I've tested the silicone feet extensively, and they won’t budge, even after using the boards in the freezer to serve cold dishes. Skip microwaving the boards or washing them in the dishwasher. But if you do want to warm it in the oven, keep the temperature below 125°, to prevent losing the feet.
- Non-absorbent polished surface from polishing. In addition, food-safe chemical sealer (approved by EU) penetrates microscopic pores to prevent stains and makes it easy to clean.
- Use as a set of cheese or charcuterie boards, trivets for something hot, a plant table, or for dangerous items like candles
- Safe (and recommended for!) chilling in fridge or freezer
- Stone is a conductive heat sink and will help to defrost frozen food, and the stone maintains consistent temperature inertia.
- Direct food contact will not discolor your board
- Not designed for microwave, or dishwasher use. If warmed in oven, such as pre-heating for a bed warming stone, please stay below 125° or risk losing your silicone feet
IMPERFECTIONS AND GUARANTEE
- Fieldstones have minor, non-structural fissures, pocks, scratches, chips, and other superficial flaws I call beauty marks. I’ve tested each of these marks to ensure the piece is not at risk of damage.
- Charcuterie Boards and Bowlders include food-safe resin to fill most such voids, but Coasters and Trivets remain all natural
- Charcuterie board workmanship is guaranteed for life
A 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. Having practiced for a time as an economist, he saw the opportunity to add value and up-cycle unwanted farm produce as a rock gleaner.
Gerald founded American Stonecraft ® in his late 20s after seeing the inside of a fieldstone for the first time after a lifetime of seeing them only from the outside. He was amazed at what he had overlooked for so long, and realized that there was a sustainable supply of these rocks that he could help farmers share at their farm stands.
Diamond tools enable him to reveal amazing colors, patterns, and geologies in the humble New England farm-gathered fieldstone that he wanted to help share with others. He applied the mantra, if not him, then who?
Gerald rolled up his sleeves, bootstrapped his life as an independent craftsman, touring at local arts and crafts shows, and taught himself how to make the fascinating products that still enchant him today. Each piece is signed by its maker, and produced under Gerald’s direct supervision if not by Gerald himself.
| Weight | 14 lbs |
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| Dimensions | 9 × 7 × 4 in |
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The Geology of New England Fieldstone
What is a fieldstone? Simply put a fieldstone is a rock that is found in a field, though that description hardly does it any justice. The story of the fieldstone is much longer, spanning millennia, and much more exciting than an inorganic chunk of minerals just sitting in a field. The story of the fieldstone is an epic.
A fieldstone is actually a patient remnant of a time long past, a time-traveler from an earlier Earth. This polished stone that you can now reach out and touch is, in fact, a wandering nomad that has seen hundreds of millions of years and earthly forces that almost defy comprehension. What if this stone, that was forced to leave the earthen embrace of Mother Nature, could actually tell you its story?
Forged in a sea of flames, crushed by shifting continents, and buried for eons, the fieldstone was then snatched from its home by an unimaginable quantity of ice restlessly meandering across the globe. Countless years have passed this stone by as it drifted across yet-to-be-named lands in solitary exile before it was finally abandoned in a field, forgotten by the forces of nature that had formed and displaced it.
Early New Englanders encountered this tired, little stone while trying to clear suitable farmland often collecting the top stones and relegating them to the stone walls for which New England is famous. Year after year, the farmers continue to battle the relentless stone and the walls grow. The fieldstone’s rough, unfriendly exterior hides a beautiful story waiting to be told.
Now, in your hands, it awaits the next chapter of its journey. From an ancient world, to your home today, this stone has an amazing story to tell, all you need to do is listen…
The story of the Fieldstone is a story of artistry.
The common fieldstone of New England is widely labeled as an unremarkable and rounded stone that can be found littering the New England low-lands and valleys. Traditionally these stones have been stacked into stone walls as a by-product of land cultivation, and, more recently, have found further usage as pieces of art and architecture. Would you like to know more?
Comparing our lifespan to the stones under our feet
To begin to understand the scope of a New England fieldstone, a simple fact of scale must be considered. We, as human beings, measure our lives in years, where as the stones measure their lives in millions of years. Just as there are different types of people out there, there is also a wide assortment of different stones as well. In a broad sense, stone can be divided up into three large categories: Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphic.
Igneous stones are usually the result of liquid magma making its way into, or on top of, the Earth’s crust where it then cools and hardens into solid stone. Typical examples include granite, basalt, and diorite in New England. Sedimentary stones are usually the result of solid stone at the Earth’s surface that is worn down into sediment (boulders, stones, sands, and mud) through various processes of erosion, deposited, and then “cemented” back into a new type of stone over vast periods of time. Fieldstones, in a broad sense, represent the initial transformative step of bedrock turning into larger sediment fragments. Common sedimentary stones are sandstone and shale. Lastly, there are the metamorphic stones. These stones are often the hardest to describe, but make for some of the most beautifully complex fieldstones. Metamorphism occurs when solid stone (of any type) is subjected to extreme heat and/or pressure allowing the minerals in the stones to remobilize and reorganize. These conditions are commonly associated with the movement or collision of landmasses, which New England experienced in its geologic history. Common metamorphic stones include marble, schist, gneiss, and quartzite.
Geologic Multi-car Pile-up
If you ask a geologist about New England geologic history to describe the local bedrock they will often use the word is “complex” at least once. In the case of our unassuming fieldstones, life often did not begin in the fields from which they emerge today. Science tells us that these stone had much earlier beginnings in the hot, molten innards of our planet. Billions of years ago, it is theorized that a super-heated, infant-staged Earth began to cool slightly where it met the vast, coolness of space, creating a thin “skin” of stone that concealed the super-heated interior. The Magma that still exists under this crust is, after all, liquid stone. An apt analogy would be to consider water and about how water, when cooled, begins to freeze.
As one might expect, these cooling slabs of crust began growing and shifting. These shifting masses began colliding with their neighbors, kind of like geologic car-crashes spanning billions of years. A combination of the cooling process and a series of geologic orogenies, or “car-crashes”, gave rise to the stone that would eventually become common fieldstone.
The stone that lays under New England is the site of a truly massive such crash. Imagine the bedrock of New England as a rail-road crossing. Four actors: the Laurentian “Locomotive”, the Taconic “Pick-up Truck”, the Acadian “Sedan”, and the Alleghenian “Cement Truck” represent the land masses.
The scene starts 440 million years ago with the Laurentian Locomotive (proto-North America) slowly lumbering down the rails. It is big, heavy, and firmly anchored to the ground below it. Suddenly, the small Taconic Pick-up (a small volcanic island chain) crashes into the right side of the massive Laurentian Locomotive. As you might imagine, the ensuing carnage of the collision is largely one-sided, but some damage is taken on both sides.
This collision of land masses was followed by two more collisions. The Acadian Sedan collided 350 million years ago, plastering the micro-continent of Avalonia on top
of the previous collision, followed by the Alleghenian Cement Truck 25 million yearslater and lasting upwards of 50 million years. This collision was the event that created the Appalachian mountain range (thought to have once been as expansive as the Himalayan mountains are now) as Euramerica (N. America) collided with Gondwana (Africa). This event created the supercontinent of Pangaea, where all the earth’s landmasses were connected to one another until its eventual separation that began roughly 180 million years ago and is still occurring today. The Appalachian mountain range still stands, but is but a shadow of its former self, as tens of millions of years of weathering has nearly washed them away.
The Big Freez(es): Ice Ages vs. Glacial Periods
It is believed that we are still in an Ice Age, though we are in a warmer period (interglacial) within this larger thermal cycle. This large cycle of global freezing and thawing is relatively recent when compared to the continental shifting that is responsible for forming the continents that we know today, but when compared to the history of our own species, the scope of ice ages still dwarf our own combined histories. During the most recent period of glaciation, it is thought that most of New England was covered with sheets of ice that was often thousands of feet thick. Evidence of this hinted at by peculiar landmarks (such as Cape Cod and Long Island) and grooves cut into solid bedrock (Glacial striations). These relentless, crushing, slow-moving sheets of ice scoured the land of most anything that wasn’t bedrock. Even the bedrock was not safe as mountains and valleys alike were forced to fracture and give up pieces of themselves to grinding advance of the ice. A period of warming occurred about 12,000 years ago, causing the receding of the ice back to its present locations near the poles. The glaciers that had long covered much of the continent of North America began to melt, recede, and drop all of the earthen material and stone that it had been carrying in its icy mass.
How the Stones Came Down from the Mountains
Stones and debris of all shapes and sizes were dropped at random about the landscape as solid land emerged from under the weight of the crushing presence of the retreating ice sheets. Stones that were dropped on hills and mountains were methodically brought to valleys and lowlands by gravity and the force of moving water. Thousands of years of rainfall, seasonal freezing/thawing, and winds placed fieldstones on the fields that farmers would eventually use to grow food.
The Rugged Holdouts
Humans are thought to been manipulating fieldstones in New England for thousands of years now, from stone tools to stone caves to property-bounding stone walls. As humans began cultivating the land for food production, the fieldstones have been the bane of their efforts of plowing and harvesting, often damaging or disabling equipment. They began making stone walls out of them and, as the yearly freeze/thaw cycle would bring more stones to the surface, the walls and piles of fieldstone would expand.
Sliced, diced, and made to look real nice!
It wasn’t until recently that humans have begun to truly realize the inner beauty of the fieldstones. Still sought after as a quaint building material, much of the beauty of the fieldstone lies hidden inside. The interior displays the complexities that hint at the struggles of each individual stone. Some sparkle, some shine, some are very colorful. Some have striations while others are smooth. Some are rounded and others pointed. Each stony fabric and texture seen on the surface of a food slab is an epic record of the creation of that particular field stone. What sort of story does your Charcuterie Board, Coaster, Or Bowl whisper to you?
4 Nichols
Shipping
- Orders $40 and up ship free throughout the continental USA. Otherwise shipping is a flat $10 fee. For Hawaii/Alaska/International shipping please email the product Serial Numbers and your destination address and we will quote the cost. Shipping to Europe is surprisingly affordable.
- Pricing information is never included in the package, and receipts are only sent to the purchaser. We offer complimentary personalized gift notes, or, simply address your package to your name, at your friends address, in order to subtilely notify the recipient of the sender.
- We typically process orders received by 10 am EST Monday - Friday by the following day. We strive to ship your order fast so you get it ASAP.
- Transit time from Lowell, MA is generally 2-6 days. Orange Region 1-2 days, Dark Brown 2-3 days, Yellow and Green 3-4 days, Blue 4-5 days, Light Brown and Purple 5-6 days. If your total package weighs less than 5 pounds (each 1 of 1 product listing will list its weight), then you might expect your product within 3 days, even across the country.
- We are often complimented on our high quality packaging and highly detailed wrapping. Items are insured and if anything arrives broken you are not liable for damages. Please notify us as soon as possible.
- You will receive a tracking number for your package via email when we ship the item. Check your spam folder if this email is missing. If you checked and think something is awry, email us at office@AmericanStonecraft.com or call/text (978) 254-7625 for questions.
- We use recyclable green packaging, paper gum tape, and kraft paper or recycled paper for void fill. This does not sacrifice the safety of your item. Please compost the boxes and void fill if possible. This is a sustainable product, through and through. Product gift boxes (inner boxes) are branded by hand with a hot branding iron rather than printed with ink, and can also be composted.
Returns / Exchanges
- If you wish to make a return or exchange from a website purchase, please email office@AmericanStonecraft.com or call/text (978) 254-7625 within two weeks of your purchase to initiate the process.
- Exchanges of website purchases have no charge to you. Notify us of your desire to make an exchange, which item(s) you desire in exchange, and we will send you a return shipping label. Please reuse your original packaging and pack in the same style.
- Returns are subject to a flat $20 fee regardless of purchase size. Notify us of your desire to make a return and we will send you a return shipping label. Please reuse your original packaging and pack in the same style. Once the item arrives we will process your refund minus the fee.
- Grill stone and baking stone purchases are final, and not eligible for return or exchange.
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