A ntonio Liberta said he’s the only one of his siblings born with stone hands.
He calls it a gift, to carve beautiful things out of beautiful slabs of stone. The colors he uses are like those out of a painter’s palette: giallo plya, Persian blue, rainforest green. His final creations are displayed in kitchens, living rooms, yachts.
Liberta’s gift was nurtured by his father, a stone mason in New York. Father and son worked on many buildings together, including the Trump Plaza. That was 25 years ago and 3,000 miles away.
Today, Liberta, 43, is far from the marble of Manhattan. His shop is in Arlington. His heart and his hands, though, are never far from the stone.
“It’s not just about the machines, it’s actually using your hands,” Liberta said. “Anybody can cut anything with a machine, just push a button. This is hand, mind and heart coordination.”
Liberta started with a local company when he first moved to the Pacific Northwest. After a year and half, he branched out. His 7-year-old daughter helped him name the company, Blue Horse Marble Inc., and word about Liberta’s skill spread through a thriving referral business.
One such client, Herb Baker, hired Liberta to help him save his kitchen.
Baker moved with his partner, Glen Boyd, to the Magnolia neighborhood in Seattle after selling a home in New Orleans four days before Hurricane Katrina hit. The two decided to have their kitchen remodeled.
They had beautiful new appliances and cabinets installed and wanted to add granite countertops. Then the contractors from hell arrived.
Baker, who is an architect, said he had never seen “anyone mess up a piece of granite like they did.”
“I’ve been working with contractors for 20 years and that’s the worst that I’ve ever seen,” Baker said.
The edge on the counter wasn’t straight. There were gaps between the counter and the cabinets. The end product looked like a “very inexpensive spec house,” Baker said.
Almvig’s, the Seattle kitchen and bath company on 12th Avenue NE, was working with Baker on his remodel and suggested he give Liberta a call.
Together, Baker and Liberta picked out Rainforest green for the granite. Liberta then expertly matched the backsplash to the counter, to give the look of one continuous piece of stone. Liberta corrected all the gaps. Today, the granite countertops are the first thing anyone notices when they step inside Baker’s kitchen.
“He treats this like a work of art and that really comes out,” Baker said.
Baker’s new kitchen was showcased on Almvig’s home page. Baker has referred Liberta to quite a few people and said he’d continue to do so.
“I’m very pleased, as you may have noticed,” Baker said.
When Liberta isn’t making figurative art with marble, he makes real pieces of art. He sculpts the marble into guitars.
Unlike cutting marble for countertops, these guitars are all made by hand. The frets are inlaid. The knobs turn. They are full-scale replicas of the real thing. Liberta can make them to fit the customer who might want a Fender as opposed to a Gibson. He’s sold three of the guitars so far.
Of course, the guitars, the furniture, the countertops, everything Liberta does is custom, in the true sense of that word.
“You piece together and you study the veins of the stone and match the next piece to a T, as though it would be one, long piece,” Liberta said. “That’s why this is custom. You do it right the first time.”
Arts writer Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424 or goffredo@heraldnet.com.
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