French Antique Foundation Slab

Of the French antique limestone blocks we handle, this foundation slab is the one with the gentlest top: a broad face of soft chalk, warm cream and muted gray, smoothed by generations of use until it feels almost velvety under the hand. The perimeter is the opposite, left wild and unpolished, craggy and pitted where the block was split from the bed. The two surfaces side by side are the whole point of the piece.

It measures 67 inches long, 50 3/4 inches deep and 8 1/4 inches high, a large, nearly square slab. It came out of a French building. The dense stone is matte and absorbs light rather than reflecting it, which is why a room with one of these in it reads calmer. It is set by machine, indoors on a floor built to carry it.

On a low steel frame it is a coffee table of real mass; set flush it becomes a raised hearth where firelight moves across the matte surface, or an entry threshold. Outdoors it is a plinth that will weather for another century. Lime plaster, white oak and blackened steel suit it. This antique limestone slab has sold. We usually have similar limestone blocks and foundation slabs in the yard or on the water; ask and we will send what is current.