French Antique Limestone Slab

A French antique limestone slab in a warm palette of wheat and soft cream, with faint charcoal traces running through the stone. The surface is open and porous, so it takes light softly and holds a little shadow in every pore. The edges are split rather than sawn, keeping the marks of the tools that first dressed the block, along with the fine fractures and weathering lines that a long life outdoors leaves on French limestone.

It is a generous rectangle of real thickness, cut as a building block rather than a paver, and its surface was as found: porous, softened at the arrises, with nothing cleaned away or filled. We did not publish its measurements before it sold, so we have left the record as it stood rather than guess. Blocks of this type weigh enough to need a pallet and a forklift.

A slab of this kind works as a dining top on a steel or oak base, as a hearth in front of a wide fireplace, as a low stone table in a loggia, or as a landing in a garden. This limestone slab has sold; we usually have others of similar scale in the yard in Marina Del Rey or on the water from France, and we are glad to send measurements and photographs of what is current.