Three words: Vermont. Verde. Antique.

That’s what the Vermont Marble Company named their unique stone 100 years ago.

 

“Verde” means green in Spanish, and this green is exotic: beautiful, deep, dark, but veined with lighter green and almost white veining accents, which reflect brilliantly due to their metallic content.

 

“Antique” suggests fine things that last for generations, and this material has been prized by architects and developers for many years.

 

And “Vermont?” Well, the Green Mountain State is synonymous with long-standing traditions of stone quarrying and fine stone work.

 

Those three words help explain why Tom Fabbioli and his 25 year old family business took on the challenge, not just of purchasing and resurrecting a quarry, but of reintroducing a stone with a proud, and trademarked, name.

 

Fabbioli’s vision is to continue fabrication using the Vermont Verde Antique stone quarried in Rochester, Vermont, expanding his business to enable him to work with the stone he says he is “in awe of,” and to market that stone nationally so others can enjoy it.

 

With stone countertops and other interior elements and architectural accents enjoying a renaissance, Fabbioli’s operation is well-positioned, especially considering his move to purchase a 40,000 square foot stone-working facility in Barre, Vermont in 2006.

 

The stone’s qualities, workability, and decorative characteristics make it perfect for a wide variety of installations—from exterior bases for fountains, planters, artistic sculptures and other outdoor artwork, to interior floors, lobbies, stairways, and countertops. Fabbioli points out that it’s not just its aesthetic beauty that makes this stone unique. “This stone is dense, hard, nearly impermeable and extremely stain and acid resistant,” he says.

“Because it’s the only green marble which can be polished and yet hold up for exterior use, and for intensive everyday use as in kitchen countertops, you’ll see it everywhere from the GM Building at Trump Plaza in New York City, to buildings world-wide,” Fabbioli explains.

 

The stone is often referred to as marble, but it is actually serpentine stone, hydrous magnesium silicate, rich, dark green in color, flecked with metallic sparks and veined with long rivers of lighter greens and near whites. Those bright reflections are caused by metallic compounds (magnetite and pyrites). Such durability and strength come from the same source as its beauty, causing it to be prized for both interior and exterior uses, due to natural plating characteristics which derive from the minerals in its composition.

 

“The quarry assures that supply of this exceptional stone is plentiful,” says operations manager Mike Solari, a 3rd-generation stoneworker whose father and grandfather worked this quarry for the former Vermont Marble Company. Solari has managed that quarry for 14 years, and continues in that capacity. “While we inherited a deep-hole quarry, typically not utilized anymore, we have increased extraction efficiency using state-of-the-art Pelligrini wire saws and an updated Giacomini stiff-leg derrick, operated by wireless remote,” Solari added. Core samples taken by Solari verified that: “we haven’t even tapped the mother-lode. At the present extraction rate, we’ve got stone for hundreds of years!”

 

And, that stone is already yielding results as part of Fabbioli’s national marketing plan. The first containers are landing on the West Coast bound for high-end residential use. “This speaks to the great response I’ve had to this stone,” Fabbioli adds.