NO STONES UNTURNED ; Stone Forest Sells Basins, Sinks and Tubs in Addition to Its Garden Fountains

When Stone Forest earned a prestigious "Secret Source" honor from This Old House magazine this month, the firm's partners were flattered, but bewildered.

"We didn't think we were all that big a secret," coowner and designer Michael Cahill said, "except perhaps in Santa Fe itself. The people here tend to drive right past us. They're on St. Francis and trying to stay in their lanes."

Any business in Santa Fe that employs 28 people and has annual gross sales of $9 million deserves to be better known.

This Old House magazine cited Stone Forest as a "secret source" of handcarved stone garden fountains, but the magazine doesn't know the half of it. Nearly nine years ago, the 17-year-old firm went into basins, sinks and tubs for baths and kitchens, and that side of the business is now 75 percent of its sales, Cahill said.

Those products range from $800 granite basins to $20,000 marble tubs, he added. Who buys $20,000 tubs? Think Southern California and Texas.

Stone Forest began as the brainchild of co-owner and designer Michael Zimber in 1989. A world traveler as an outdoor guide, Zimber decided that he needed a business to anchor him in Santa Fe.

"He says he took what he knew from climbing and surfing -- stone and water -- and put them together as a business," Cahill said.

(Zimber was on an extended stone-buying trip while this story was being researched.)

Zimber had good timing; He'd started his business just as natural- material garden fixtures like fountains, lanterns and benches were becoming a trend. His first designs were Japanese-style garden fixtures, which he had carved overseas. Within a year, his designs had become more Zen than Imperial Japanese.

Working from the "less is more" aesthetic, he started bringing natural blocks to Santa Fe and hiring local craftsmen to carve his designs. A warehouse on Agua Fria became the firm's factory.

Zimber created Santa Fe/Japan-influenced designs that would be one-of-a-kind creations, like the Mizubachi (Japanese for "basin") fountain that is Stone Forest's trademark look. In black granite, 39 inches high, it costs about $3,600. One stands in the courtyard of Tomasita's restaurant, an imprimatur of local approval.

Most of the garden fixture designs from that early-'90s period are still in the catalogue, Cahill noted. He came into the business as a co-designer and partner in 1997, after a degree in forestry and a local career in plant management.

"Neither of us 'two Mikes' were trained for the roles we have here," said Cahill with a laugh, "but we seem to have ended up where we belong."

Kitchens, baths

Cahill's entry into Stone Forest coincided with the firm's first tentative move into stone sinks. That side of the business has expanded greatly in the subsequent nine years, he said. The stone and metal sinks, tubs and basins are sold through 300 high-end showrooms throughout the country, Cahill said. Most are independently owned, although four small chains of stores are involved.

The work is almost all done in Santa Fe by the firm's 21 skilled craftspeople. Large blocks of stone -- granites from China, carrera and travertine marbles and limestone from Italy, crema marfil, rojo alicante and perlato suevo marbles from Spain, iridescent "blue pearl" granite from Norway, honey, white or brown onyxes from Pakistan -- are roughed out overseas and finished locally.

The stone is bought, Cahill added intriguingly, at "stone fairs" where quarry owners set up multiple-ton sample blocks of their wares. The largest such fair is in Italy; it must look like an Italianate Stonehenge.

Stone Forest has also branched into copper and bronze sinks and basins, as the two Mikes looked for other natural materials that would help them stay positioned in the markets.

If you're looking for a soaking vessel that will outlast your house and probably your family, a $12,000 granite bathtub would be your ticket. Carved out of a single, huge block of granite, it has a smooth interior and rough, natural exterior -- unless you want a more polished look. And with all the high-volume shipping contracts Stone Forest has, it'll only cost about $600 to ship it to you.

The popularity of the granite and marble bathtubs somewhat bemuses Cahill.

He said he and Zimber created the first one because it was great fun. "We never realized we would start to sell them," he said.

After all, yes, a carreramarble tub is beautiful and, yes, it will hold the heat (stone is a natural insulator) of your soaking water, but it costs $20,000. Still, he understands the heirloom quality. The tub looks like something from an ancient Roman bath and not much will change that. "This stone has been naturally weathered over a few million years and it will last a few million more," he said wryly.

Sinks, basins

The largest volume of sales from the kitchen-and-bath catalogue is sinks and basins, though. Onyx, granite and marble bathroom basins, both inset and floating on top of counters, are carved in the simple, Zen-like styles that characterized Zimber's early designs. They range in price from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

"With granite, it's mainly a matter of deciding where to position the bowl," Cahill said. "With marble and onyx, it's more a matter of showing off the grain."

Stone Forest also fabricates copper or bronze pedestals to hold the sinks, if clients desire.

The most popular kitchen sink is a 19-by-30-inch copper sink that costs $3,000. The most popular stone sink is a 22-by-33-inch granite sink that sells for $1,650. "Seeing these products gets people thinking about natural materials in a different way," Cahill said. "It's not just for countertops and floor tiles."

Meanwhile, thanks to This Old House's plug, the garden fixtures business is catching people's eyes again. "We have gotten many calls," Cahill said. "Little features like that are usually much better than advertising."

The business has been increasing its gross sales 30-35 percent each year, he said, although labor and materials costs also increase yearly. "As gross goes up, margins come down, but that's true in any manufacturing, I think," he said. "We mainly try and have a lot of fun with it. That way, if people don't buy our products, at least we had fun."

(c) 2006 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.