'It's clearly alabaster.' These words from the 'expert' sank the Farmer's Insurance company's case. I was called to assess the provenance of forty life sized statues for a client in Indiana whose outdoor collection had been damaged by a severe hailstorm. The marble was covered by the property owner's policy so a claim was filed. Rather than spend time searching far and wide for someone who knew about stone, the insurance company hired a local jack of all trades, a clock restorer whose experience with stone was limited to waxing opaque decorative surfaces. Never having seen light pass through fine marble, he jumped to the false conclusion that the stone must be alabaster, a highly transparent material often used for lamp glass. The articles he quoted came straight from the internet.
Michelangelo himself was very attracted to translucence when buying marble, because he felt it gave life to his figures. Indeed, when walking around a statue, the possibility of seeing light through the thinnest sections changes as you move, making them almost appear to be trembling. It is an essential property of fine, white Carrara marble. At ARW Studios, we have forty years of experience working primarily with this material. At first glance, it was obvious that the material of the statues was the same marble, or very similar. Reading the report of the insurance company, it became clear that their 'expert' knew nothing whatsoever about stone, about the statues, about workmanship, or about whose hands produced them.
The client only partially paid for my trip to Italy, because I was going anyway as I often do for my business. I obtained marble samples from Carrara and alabaster from Volterra, and fedexed them to the lab in Indiana which had done the analysis of the material of the statues. A match, and for the alabaster, a nine point list of its vast technical differences from the material of the statues. I found the original dealer who sold the statues from his showroom in Italy. The result was a multimillion dollar settlement, at a total cost of just over fourteen thousand dollars billed by my company, which the insurance company paid.
ARW Studios is very familiar with every aspect of stone, and of production, importation, proper techniques, correcting flaws, and assessment of risk. Our experience is way beyond that of someone who waxes clocks as a hobby, and if you truly need an expert, the best move you can make is to hire a professional.
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