WHATEVER THE MOUNTAIN GIVES US

Kincannon Studios
Austin, Texas                 2.28.2012

A project like this begins and ends with the stone. Joseph Kincannon’s monolith design called for ten single saw cut blocks of limestone, 22 tons in all, ranging from 7-8 1/2 feet tall and 24″-30″ thick. Not all quarries cut blocks that size. Those that do have limited beds where they go that large. Additionally, as Holly Kincannon told me, there’s never a guarantee on an order this size that all the stone can be cut from the same bed, and even if it is there can be substantial variation. Contrary to Jeffersonian principles, not all limestone is created equal!

We caught our first break when the quarry (Mezger Enterprises in Lampasas, Texas) called to say they’d been able to quarry all ten blocks from one location. When I asked Holly what the stone would look like, she answered me with an old mason’s expression: “Whatever the mountain gives us”.

Joseph Kincannon liked what he saw in the course of offloading and stacking the blocks. Several weeks of cutting and carving later, his verdict was confirmed: the mountain had given us some of its finest. The stone was excellent.

Fun Limestone Fact: All the limestone in the United States was formed at the same time, roughly 600 million years ago