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Featured Artisan, Sea Stones

The Sea Stones Story

Arra David and Anne Johnson have long revered the treasures of New England’s forests and seacoast. Mother Nature’s work ranges from the brilliance of hardwoods artfully coloring autumn’s landscapes…to the ever-changing granite cliffs shaped by crashing waves along the shorelines…to the delicate intricacies of a smooth sea stone comfortably nestled in a bed of sand. These stirring images have inspired Sea Stones since 2003.

Arra’s creative spirit, mind, and hands fashion ways to transform these natural materials into well-designed, innovative works of art. Anne’s astute attention to detail, quality, and respect for the earth are felt in each piece. By cherishing a lifetime spent immersed in the unique beauty and charm of this region, they have gracefully conveyed the outdoor essence of New England indoors as decorative, inventive, and purposeful art creations.

Nature’s enduring forces of sun, wind, rain, and mighty waves provide the materials. Sea Stones brings the human elements of care, compassion, and respect for the environment by creating each unique piece by hand in harmony with nature’s gifts.

About The Artists

Sea Stones Anne and Arra
Arra David:
Working with stone calls for custom fixtures and techniques. Arra is an engineer and furniture maker, and it’s part of his normal care and feeding to put him in the workshop and let him make tools.

Anne Johnson:
Anne is an artist with a keen eye for balance and harmony. She blends the endless varieties of nature’s materials into pieces that decorate homes and will keep generations connected to their environment.

8 Paths to Green with Sea Stones

1. “Replanted” Stones: We collect with permission from private rivers and beaches all over New England. When we collect a stone, we want to make sure there will always be a replacement for future gatherers. So we purchase stones from a quarry, and for each stone we harvest, we ‘plant’ a new stone in the water. Over the years, the water tumbles the rough ‘seed’ into a smooth, rounded stone.

2. A Granite win/win: We salvage landfill-bound granite countertop remnants from local fabricators to create all of our polished stone work. Custom machines we made from used hydraulic industrial tools and mining equipment give these pieces their organic “chomped” edges without water-and-power-intensive edge polishing.

3. 10X Trees Replanted: We source hardwoods from sawyers who support the Forest Stewardship Council, an international woodland conservation group. Plus, each year Sea Stones plants ten times the number of trees we use to create our work.

4. Built for a Lifetime, or Perhaps Several: One of the greenest things we can all do is to reduce consumption. Our work is well made with durable materials, robust designs and solid manufacturing methods so it won’t need to be discarded and replaced. Everything we make comes with a lifetime guarantee which backs our commitment to durability.

5. Anti Plastic: To reduce our consumption of petroleum, our anti-plastic policy eliminates plastic as a component in all of our products. Any plastic used in our packaging is reused from packing materials we receive, as is the newspaper we use to wrap much of our work. In addition, we gather and shred landfill-bound cardboard from local businesses to make packing material.

6. Recycled Materials:
We print exclusively on recycled paper.
Our Stone-Stemmed Wine Glasses are made with recycled glass.
We collect and reuse surplus packing materials from local businesses.
The cores from our Stone Napkin Rings are used to make our On The Rocks drink chillers, and the cores from our Drink Chiller Coasters are used to make our Picture Holders.
The tools we build and our tradeshow booth make use of countless found and saved items.

7. Geothermal Heating and Cooling: The Sea Stones studio is entirely heated and cooled using geothermal heat pumps. Extracting energy from the groundwater in Mother Earth, there is zero combustion, zero use of oil or gas, and zero net water consumption. A relatively small amount of electricity is used to power the water pump and compressors. Ours is the first residential installation of geothermal heat pumps combined with radiant floors in New England.

8. Snug as a Bug: Our studio is constructed in full compliance with the Energy Crafted Home program, which specifies energy-efficient construction techniques, minimum R-values, and leaktightness enforced with a blower door test. The result is a workspace that uses very little energy.