Design
Rock Star
By replicating ancient stonework down to the tiniest detail, Bob Ragan has carved out a niche among renovators, decorators, and other high-end clients.
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It is by paying such close attention to existing stonework that Ragan has honed much of his craft. Though he studied art for only a year in high school, he has an ardor for buildings and can often be found poring over architecture books, such as one on Europe’s great cathedral builders. He learned about structures and proportion while working as a bricklayer and stonemason, first in Oklahoma in the sixties and then in Austin in the early seventies. And in the late seventies he worked as the carver at a stone mill near Florence, where he and his girlfriend, Mary Condon (who is now his business partner), purchased an old farmhouse. The mill took slabs of rock fresh from a quarry, sliced them into manageable sizes for construction, and did some simple cuttings by machine, such as moldings for an entryway; the intricate work was given to Ragan. “I took to it like a duck to water,” he remembers. Among his favorite projects were the signs he created for Davenport Ranch, a tony subdivision in West Austin.
When construction dried up during the bust in the mid-eighties, so did work at the stone mill; that’s when Ragan started Texas Carved Stone. “At the mill I realized there was a good market for someone to specialize in custom work,” he says. From the beginning, he targeted the Architectural Digest crowd—people who would appreciate and be able to pay for the time and skill that went into making, say, a cartouche for a high relief doorway panel. His first project, however, was more abstract: a New Age sculpture garden for a client in Wimberley.
After showing sample pieces to designers and architects, Ragan began to get steady work. His business grew to the point that in 1994 he moved into a large metal building with a five-ton crane that allows him to move heavy pieces of stone without getting a hernia. Today he works on about one hundred projects a year, with fireplaces being the core of his business. His creations range from a simple $2,500 mantel to ones that are two stories tall and can cost ten times that amount. Ragan can recreate details in any style, from simple French provincial to baroque wedding cake frills. One of his most ornate pieces was for a customer who wanted a bas-relief of a series of wild animals across the front, including meticulously carved antlers on the deer.
Whenever he is commissioned to create a fireplace, Ragan begins by choosing the right stone. Like a sommelier who notices slight variations in wine vintages, he is attuned to all the nuances of stone, a material that to the uninitiated seems notable only for its unyielding sameness. Here in Texas, particularly Central Texas, there are plenty of varieties. The stone most popular with Ragan’s clients is called Cordova creme stone, which is quarried in western Williamson County. This stone, often used for fireplaces, is soft, is colored tan or white, and contains scattered marine fossils dating back millions of years, to a time when the heart of Texas was at the bottom of the ocean. Although some people see fossils as imperfections and want them patched, Ragan loves to leave them exposed if he thinks they’re beautiful. “Stone is a natural product,” he says. “I think the fossils add character.” Ragan often uses Cordova shell stone, which is even more heavily covered with fossils, to make tabletops that show off the texture and function as massive geology exhibits. Some owners seal the stone since it’s very porous and prone to absorb stains; others place a piece of glass on top.
Ragan also works with gray Lueders limestone, the strongest available limestone and a popular choice for exterior elements, as well as Florence limestone, which has a smooth, finely grained surface that looks like unpolished white marble and is requested by clients who want pieces with a more refined look. And he has recently begun carving with a newly available stone from Big Spring. Called West Texas creme stone, it has a porous grain that is good for fireplaces and comes in pink, coral, and champagne. “I can’t wait to do a pink job,” says Ragan.
After deciding on the stone and ordering it from a nearby mill called Continental Cut Stone, Ragan makes a pattern of every piece that will go into the fireplace (some have as many as 52 pieces). Once the client has approved the pattern, the lines are traced onto the raw stone; then circular saws take large chunks of rock away to bring the piece to its rough form. From there, chisels (some with teeth) and gouges in a variety of sizes are used to further define the forms. One difference between Ragan and early carvers is that his chisel is powered not by muscle but by a pneumatic hammer. Developed early this century, pneumatic hammers use air compression to produce an even, constant impact on the chisel and enable carvers to work faster and with more control (not to mention more noise; the classical music playing in Ragan’s studio is often drowned out by the harsh, staccato pounding of the hammer). “To do something totally by hand is wasted energy, and it costs a lot more money,” he says. “Believe me—if Michelangelo had had one, he would have used it.”
When the chiseling is done, Ragan uses a rasp, or stone file, and sandpaper to finish the piece out. It takes twelve to fourteen weeks for him to complete an average fireplace—even more if he puts it through an aging process. Dousing the pieces with buttermilk and setting them under the Spanish oaks in his yard encourages mold growth. After the surface is sanded, the fireplace has an uneven, mottled look, as if it had been worn down by time and soot over hundreds of years in some grand castle.
Of course, Ragan assumes that all of his carvings will age nicely on their own and that they’ll be appreciated for years to come. “A lot of times I look at some beautifully carved pieces of stone on, say, brownstones in New York, and I wonder who did it. No one knows, because the stone carvers didn’t sign their work.” He won’t suffer such anonymity in his afterlife, for he etches his name and the date on everything. “We often think that after we’re dead one hundred years people will be collecting our pieces,” he says. “We hope they won’t use them for roads.”
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