Antique French Limestone Trough

A wide antique French limestone trough with a coarse, pebbled exterior in silver-gray and charcoal and an interior that surprises: the smoother, gently sloped basin inside is warm honey and rust where minerals have washed through the stone for a century. The rim is thick and undulates along its length, dipping and curving where the edge has worn away, so the line of the top is never quite straight.

It measures 65 inches wide, 36 inches deep and 25 inches high, wide enough across that the interior reads as a pool rather than a channel. By type it is an 18th or 19th century French farm piece. Nothing has been cut back or evened out; the irregular rim is how it came to us.

Beneath a brass wall spout it is the catchment for a cascading water feature; in a summer kitchen a stone trough of this width is a wash sink for a crowd; filled with crushed ice it holds drinks for a long table. Weathered oak decking around it and brushed copper fittings above it pick up the rust tones inside this limestone trough. The piece has sold. We usually have wide troughs in the yard or on the water from France; ask and we will send what is current.