Rock solid | An Orland stone cutter brings an ancient art into Maine homes and beyond
Let’s be clear: Jeff Gammelin says he wants people to know his company, Freshwater Stone Inc., isn’t pushy when it comes to the design of a project, be it countertops, fireplaces, landscape or other creations made of his locally quarried, massive stones. But apparently there’s an exception if you’re building a new cancer center in Brewer.
Gammelin says his company placed a bid to build a fireplace facing for Eastern Maine Medical Center’s new cancer treatment building in Brewer. But the design left him, well, cold.
“It was a very generic looking fireplace with just square cut stones. It was blue-gray stone and it was just cold,” Gammelin says while sitting at a conference table made with granite from his company’s Frankfort quarry. “We went up there and made a presentation. We said, ‘This is in your lobby, you know?’ People with cancer — living, dying and recovering — and their families, they need — I mean I’m speaking from personal experience here, something to kind of uplift you to distract you in a positive way from what you are going through. And this fireplace they had designed wasn’t going to do it.”
Freshwater Stone got the job and a new design. It’s one of the many projects that the 34-year-old company has undertaken, from simple granite counters to elaborate landscape architecture to projects for some well-heeled, part-time Mainers including David Rockefeller Jr. and Martha Stewart.
Gammelin started the company with his wife, Candy, after the couple built their own home in part by using field stone from their property.
“Somebody asked me to build a fireplace for them after I built my own and that’s how it started,” Gammelin says.
The stone became a medium for him.
“I all of a sudden started to see it, the mosaic qualities of the stone; it’s not just randomly putting stone together, but that you can actually work on a composition and there’s movement and the movement is determined by how you mass the different shapes together, the lines, the joints, the colors and then the groupings of stone, like in a Gauguin painting,” he says. “There are masses of colors, but then there are groupings within those masses of colors, whether they are blue or brown or whatever. So it has parallels that way and you just start using those ideas and you know overlay them onto the stone work and it’s really neat.”
A letter from satisfied customer Rockefeller adorns a wall at the company’s showroom and construction facility, which covers about 22,000 square feet in Orland. The note, an acknowledgement of Gammelin’s fine work on a “monumental granite fireplace” in Rockefeller’s Seal Harbor home, describes Gammelin as a “master craftsman, and an artist, whose medium is stone.”
Stonework for the masses
Though the company’s custom work is expensive — custom fireplaces can typically range between $25,000 and $100,000 and custom counters run between $70 and $200 per square foot installed — Gammelin says stone can be both cost-effective and environmentally friendly in the long term.
“If you are going to pre-fab a house or do a modular home there’s no reason you can’t include modular stone work in it. When stone work gets customized, it gets expensive and it should be — it’s one of a kind,” he says. “But stone is a very green and durable material. It’s quarried and manufactured right from the get-go right here. I’m really into that — to get nice, affordable housing that uses durable materials and stone.”
To underscore his point, he says stone door and window sills don’t need repainting or replacement. “(Stone) just stays there forever,” he says. “This stuff always looks good.”
Gammelin says business continues to be good, though he acknowledges the recession’s impact on overall construction has been noticeable. Revenues are running toward $5 million annually, not bad for what Gammelin considers a manufacturing enterprise.
He bristles when people say manufacturing is dying in Maine. Granite work used to be big business in the state, then fell out of favor, considered an outdated building material, he says.
“But really, it’s coming back and it should come back and we’re trying to promote it with architects because it lasts forever,” he says. “Sure, (manufacturing) has been on a decline and yet this is an industry, we are not in decline, we’re really growing.”
Gammelin’s observation is shared by others within the natural stone industry, which is enjoying rising popularity fueled by increasing interest in sustainable building practices and LEED certification, says Jane Bennett, executive vice president of the Building Stone Institute, a trade association of craftsmen, designers, architects and retailers of natural stone products based in Chesterville, N.Y.
“Natural stone is playing a larger part in earning those LEED credits,” says Bennett, noting its organic and non-toxic principles make it ideally suited to sustainable design. The institute is working on a collection of best practices from extraction techniques to retailing, with the goal of creating a green certification designation for the natural stone industry.
“Landscape architects, interior designers, architects, carvers, quarriers ... all are interested in LEED-certified work,” says Bennett.
Not set in stone
Walking around his facility, Gammelin delights in the co-existence of high-tech and hand-made functions.
A giant stone saw that can read CAD drawings operates just a few feet away from a sculptor who is hand-carving a stone “couch” to be sent off to the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland.
“(The business is) really technologically advanced and it also really draws on the experience of the stonecutter, you know the experience of hands-on stone cutters and stone craftsmen, so it’s a great blending of the old and the new,” he says.
A short walkway, muddy with stone dust and water, leads to a room with the first of two giant wire saws.
“They cut our base stones, usually about 5’ x 10’ x 4’, and can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he says loudly, raising his voice over the moving saw and running water, which is cascading over the large, granite block.
He says he can cut any length of stone horizontally.
“We cut a 27-foot-long stone on it,” Gammelin says, for the observation tower and the Penobscot Narrows Bridge Observatory.
Work outdoors is limited on this sunny, but brisk January day. Gammelin points out a towering block of granite that he will try and turn into a single-stone, stand-alone fireplace.
“I think we’ve finally figured out how to do it,” he says, adding that he and his crew stand ready to be challenged by creative customers.
“What we’re trying to get designers to do, whether it’s architects or engineers or landscape architects, is to come up with new things. We tell them look, we have all the equipment and all the abilities to do just about anything you want us to do,” he says.
Gammelin credits his workers as one of his top resources and marketable qualities. The company employs nearly 50 full-time workers.
“It’s 34 years that we’ve been doing this, so we have a lot of experience,” he says. “You come up with the ideas and then we collaborate with you and figure out the most efficient way to do it.”
Trying to be versatile in the projects he works on has helped the company stay above water, despite the sluggish economy, Gammelin says.
“We’ve really tried to diversify our base, who we’re selling to,” he says. “We love working locally, and we really want to keep doing it, but we have a job in France, we’re involved in a job in South Carolina and we have probably four or five jobs in Massachusetts, one in New Hampshire, as well as a number of jobs all over (Maine).”
Sometimes in the marketing, a product sells itself. A Frenchman saw a piece of granite in New York and inquired about its origins, which turned out to be Freshwater Pearl, the company’s own quarried stone. The Frenchman wanted it.
“This job in France, it’s a chapel, and everything is stone — monolithic stone,” Gammelin says, adding that about half of their projects incorporate their Frankfort stone. “There’s like 20 pieces of stone that make up that whole chapel, some of them are huge, the ceiling pieces are just huge.”
So huge, in fact, that Gammelin says they sent some raw stone over the Atlantic to be finished there.
“We’re not even doing the ceiling pieces, they are too big and I didn’t know how to pick them up without chipping them,” he said. “You could put a year’s worth of work into one of those pieces and you chip it and it’s done.”
Gammelin says he has found most success when he’s cultivated good working relationships with landscape companies and designers, finding that familiarity leads to efficiency and flexibility.
“For repeat customers, it’s very relationship oriented. We’ll work with certain designers and certain architects and landscape designers and start to understand each other, start to trust each other,” he says. “And then you are speaking the same language and you can really kind of count on each other for projects and they can count on you for schedule. They are the ones that appreciate what you are doing and they can see that there’s an advantage for them to use us.”
Over the years, Gammelin’s role in the company has evolved. He no longer cuts stone, but stays on top of the business part of things. But he’s still the designer and innovator at the company’s core, constantly grappling with what could be done creatively and what can’t for the sake of good business.
“We generate so much stone, so many cut-outs, cut-offs and ends, parts of slabs and stuff, that what we do is put (the leftovers) down over the bank over there,” he says with a bit of regret in his tone. “It breaks my heart to throw that stuff over the bank, but we just get buried in it. You just can’t use it all.”
Rebekah Metzler, a writer based in Portland, can be reached at editorial@mainebiz.biz.
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