Artisans take shine to stone

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

Travelers who have visited museums in London or Paris may well have seen some of Larimer County's alabaster on display.

"It's famous around the world," said local artist Victor Salazar, who has been carving the stuff for more than 30 years. Salazar likes the local alabaster because it's easy to work with and has so many different hues within one piece.

Those who stay closer to home may have also seen Larimer County alabaster, which for decades has been shaped into vases, bowls and nightlights shaped like lighthouses.

The place to find this stone is Colorado Alabaster Supply, a stone supplier on North College Avenue. Tucked away down an inconspicuous driveway, the business has been selling alabaster since 1973. It's now owned by Stan and Sue Jones of LaPorte, who bought the business from Stan Jones' father. His father also founded Lloyd's Art Shop in 1951, a business now run by Jones' brother Gary.

The local alabaster is prized by both sculptors and lathe artists. Alabaster is much softer than marble, Jones explained, so it's easier to work with and takes a polish more quickly. With its translucent, luminous quality, it has been used to make beautiful lamps. Stone from the local quarry comes in variations of three colors - pink, white and gray - with each vein having its unique characteristics.

The favorite color among Jones' customers is pink, the traditional hue for Colorado alabaster. Pink works well for busts, while gray or white are preferred by Northwest Native Americans such as the Innuit tribes. Lathe turners generally prefer pink, since the reddish lines in the stone provide great visual interest.

Even tiny items can be carved from alabaster. "One fellow came in who had six detailed buffalo carved out of alabaster," Jones said. They were so small that all six could fit on a silver dollar.

The mine that supplies the stone has been in the Jones family since 1969. The alabaster is extracted with a large front-end loader, then cut into pieces for shipping. The largest piece ever shipped out by the company, Jones said, was about 7 feet tall and weighed 8,600 pounds.

Colorado Alabaster Supply is mostly a mail-order business, with pallets of stone shipped to sculpture supply houses as well as individual artists. Local alabaster has traveled as far as Japan, Australia and the Philippines, and Jones said his company has earned a reputation for high quality stone.

"We send pieces with as few flaws as humanly possible," he noted. Since alabaster is a friendly medium for beginning sculptors, schools throughout the country also purchase the stone.

Local artists like to come to the site to pick out their own stone. Jones also sells a wide variety of sculpting tools.

Alabaster is very susceptible to weathering, and it must be kept dry before shipping. At the local company's mine north of Fort Collins, alabaster is extracted only during warm months. The quarry is covered with 4 feet of dirt during the winter to prevent damage.

Alabaster, a form of gypsum, is found in many locations throughout the world, and it has been used extensively in Egypt since the time of the pharaohs. Many alabaster items dating to 1300 B.C. were found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, including a bust of the king himself.

The local history of mining alabaster doesn't go back quite so far. Several mines were operated in Larimer County before World War II, one of those on the Roberts Ranch near Livermore. According to Derek Roberts, his father Evan ran quite an operation on the ranch in the 1930s and '40s, including a mine and a manufacturing facility. Artisans made small objects such as lighthouses, vases and bowls, as well as larger pieces like fireplace fronts and storefronts. Roberts even had a machine that would turn out copies of professionally made sculptures. He sold the alabaster wares in gift shops all over the country.

The Roberts Ranch alabaster business came to a sudden stop during World War II. The government confiscated the manufacturing equipment for the war effort, and Roberts himself joined the Army.

A well-known alabaster business in Loveland was the Proctor Alabaster Gift Shop, located on U.S. Highway 34. Recently, the Loveland Museum and Gallery recreated the shop within the museum's walls. It's now used to display alabaster objects created by the Proctor family from the 1930s to the '70s.