Focus on Stone Source
Chattanooga, TN Company Still Focused on Quality After 16 years
by Joel Davis
Photos by Joel Davis and Stone Source
Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Stone Source remains a beacon of quality, craftsmanship, and meticulous care in the industry.
Stone Source offers natural stone, tile, countertops, flooring, and plumbing fixtures. The business is distinguished by the level of craftsmanship and commitment it brings to the market, founder Frank Baker said. “We’re very hands-on in everything we do. Everybody can wear a different hat. I wear several. I pretty much touch everything we do. We all do.”
Stone Source has a showroom and a fabrication facility located on Broad Street in Chattanooga. Baker said that Stone Source has been serving the public since 1997.
He entered the stone fabrication field after a career spent in the tile installation business.
The company employs about 20 people: Baker, his partner, Blackwell Smith, and their wives, several crews of tile installers as well as the workers who man the fabrications shop.
Dana Smith brings about 24 years of interior design experience to the business, while Anna Baker runs the showroom and has helped add exclusive lines such as Walker Zanger and Sonoma Tilemakers to Stone Source’s offerings.
The size of the business and the experience of its workers lets it offer higher quality than other shops, Baker said.
“Not knocking a big shop, but if you are going over there and telling someone what to do or doing it, versus having a CAD operator running a CNC machine, you’re going to get a better result in my opinion.”
Technology is only a tool. It is experience and dedication to craftsmanship that matters most, Baker said. “We don’t have a shop based on the latest and greatest technology. I believe technology is great if it’s utilized correctly. We believe in quality not quantity. We would rather do 10 detailed jobs over doing 100 jobs quick and cheap. The stone business has become cheap and is losing the true meaning of being a craftsman.”
Baker does a great deal of research to find quality materials, only hires the best artisans, and uses the best tools for the job, he said.
“Stone should last a lifetime and it must be fabricated and installed correctly. If you hire somebody to do something, wouldn’t you prefer to hire someone who is passionate about what they do? We pay attention to details and think outside the box.”
Stone Source has been working on a high profile project at Liberty Tower, owned and managed by Jim Berry Company, that is located at the corner of Sixth and Chestnut in downtown Chattanooga.
The business’ involvement began when it was tapped to provide marble for some interior features, Baker said. “They wanted a source to buy marble for the cladding around the elevators.”
Stone Source’s part in the project continued to grow, Baker said.
“While we were there, they decided to install marble throughout the whole lobby area on the floors. They continued that cladding here and there on the wainscot and several other places as well.
“Then they had another project where they wanted to do a foundation for a statue, a replica of the Statue of Liberty. We clad the foundation with polished brown antique marble.”
The 11-foot replica of the Statue of Liberty is one of only 12 copies of the original study model, used by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi when building the statue, that will ever be made.
A French art dealer had a mold of the fragile plaster model, on display in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, created using advanced digital surface scanning techniques. The statue was cast in bronze using lost-wax casting methods.
The statue is owned by the Berry Family and has been loaned to Liberty Tower for display in the lobby by Jim Berry, president of Liberty Tower LLC, according to a press release.
Cladding the star-shaped base posed technical challenges, Baker said. “We used quirk miters on all the marble cladding. The base was also very complicated because of the unusual miters. Much of the work had to be done in place.”
Stone Source also contributed to the construction of a fountain in Liberty Tower. Boulders of Georgia Cherokee marble were placed in the fountain for the water to flow over.
“We had to do a full radius with marble in as big of pieces as possible around the fountain with the same material we used on the elevator cladding,” Baker said.
“We finished that, then we moved outside, and they decided they wanted to use the coated Dakota mahogany flame finish for the sidewalk. They also wanted to accent that with brown antique flame finish. It basically used 36 inch by 36 inch (tiles) for the diagonals on the inside of it. The border was the brown antique. Then they decided they wanted to clad an exterior wall out of polished brown antique granite and miter it in with polished coated mahogany.”
Stone Source is being called upon for more work on Liberty Tower, Baker said.
“Now we’re getting ready to start on the third phase of the project. We are going to clad 10 feet up a 50-foot wall with two centimeter brown antique marble and (inscribe text that) gives the history of the Statue of Liberty. It’s going to be sandblasted into the stone.”
The logistics of the Liberty Tower work have been daunting. The project has so far entailed installing about 3,500 square feet of stone cladding, about 2,500 square feet of marble tile installation, and about 3,000 square feet of granite sidewalk installation.
“They wanted all this done in a very quick time frame,” Baker said. “We were able to get it — plus the fountain — done in a two month period. Orchestrating all that was a challenge, just making sure I didn’t put the cart before the horse, and I could not have done it without the craftsmen that work with us.”
Credit goes to all of Stone Source’s talented employees, he said.
“None of this would be possible without their hard work and their focus on details. I couldn’t do without the quality materials from my suppliers on this project — IGM, Walker Zanger, Triton Stone Knoxville, and Akdo Marble.”
Before starting Stone Source, Baker worked for his stepfather in the construction industry, building homes and executing commercial projects.
“I’ve always been fascinated with natural stone,” he said. “When I was doing installations, I started working with a granite fabricator, the only one in town. He started throwing a lot of his stone tile work my way. I grew up (in the business) doing stone tile more than anything. That’s what we specialized in.”
Stone Source began as an attempt by Baker and the fabricator to steer customers away from traveling to larger cities for their stone needs.
“The two of us started to open up a tile showroom, and we were going to try to deter people from going to Atlanta to try to get their higher-end natural stone and tile.”
In 2003, Frank bought out his original partner. The next year, Smith and his wife came onboard as partners.
Smith is an experienced contractor with knowledge of building practices and the plumbing industry. He and Baker decided to start a joint venture by adding plumbing fixtures to Stone Source’s already established tile and countertop business.
Baker has served on the Tile Council of America, National Standard Specifications for the Installation of Ceramic Tile Committee.
In the end, Stone Source’s reputation relies on the craftsmanship it imparts to its offerings.
“Everything we do, we try to do it the best we can,” Baker said. “We do not have unhappy customers. That’s the bottom line.”
For more information about Stone Source, visit their website www.stonesourceinc.com or call 423-267-4386.