The studio takes two garden-wall commissions a month through the season, and holds that line on purpose — serpentine work is laid to a string that bends, which is a pace, not a race.
What we do
Three crafts, one drawing each
Serpentine & garden walls
Walls laid to a curve on a drawn radius, fieldstone in full mortar beds with through-stones every third course, capped with a stone coping cut to follow the bend. Drained behind so the frost never gets a vote — a curved wall is still a drainage decision wearing a handsome coat.
Restoration & lime repointing
Hand-raked joints flushed with NHL 3.5 matched to the chip from your own wall, struck to the profile the mason who built it chose. We read the wall before we touch it — the elevation tells us what it was, and we put back exactly that.
Anchored veneer & cladding
Thin and full-bed stone hung on stainless Z-anchors at sixteen inches on centre over a two-layer barrier, base flashing and weep vents at the dime lines. The anchors carry the wall; the stone just takes the compliments.
Since 2009
The studio record
A studio of six, drawing everything twice — once for you, once for the yard. The figures are counted from the studio ledger, not estimated from memory.
Selected commissions
The wall book
Six walls from the last three seasons, chosen for the range — curved, straight, hung and pointed. Every owner will take your call; ask the studio for the introduction.
Curves, anchors, lime
Questions from the drawing table
Why draw a garden wall first?
Because a curve that is not on paper is a curve that cannot be quoted, checked or argued with. The radius, the coping cuts, the anchor spacing and the drainage all live on one sheet — and the sheet is what we price from, so nothing on it can become an extra.
What is behind a curved wall?
The same as behind a straight one, only more so: free-draining stone, filter fabric and an outlet at the toe. Water is the mason’s only enemy, and it is defeated with geometry, not optimism — the curve just makes the geometry better looking.
Can you match our old stone?
From three quarries, two salvage yards and the studio’s own yard stock. The match is laid out dry beside your wall, wetted, and approved by you in daylight before a single stone is bedded.
How does the studio price?
Garden walls from $68 a square foot of face, serpentine work from $74, restoration repointing from $19, veneer from $36 — all confirmed by the measure and held sixty days. The drawing is part of the commission, never an extra.
Every other outfit wanted to straighten the wall. Serpentine wanted to know the radius, then cut the coping to follow it. The garden now does the thing a garden is supposed to do, which is make people slow down at the bend.
They restored our granary brick with a lime matched so well the parish historian asked which section was new. None of it is new. That is the point, and apparently the compliment.
The drawing showed anchor spacing with a number on it, which no brochure ever does. Two winters on, the cladding reads quarried and the weeps weep. I have sent three neighbours.
Fifteen years, on the drawing
If a studio wall settles, a joint fails or an anchor lets go inside fifteen years, we return and correct it at no charge — against the drawing, which we keep a copy of, and so do you.
Free within thirty minutes of Caslon Mills · studio@serpentinestone.example
Serpentine Stone Studio · Lic. MS-55210 · 4 Mill Lane, Caslon Mills · (555) 292-6877 · studio@serpentinestone.example