Surface Ready Rocks

A flat stone has a role of its own

A stone lying flat behaves differently than a block standing out of a slope. It appears where water has smoothed it or where a layer has met the surface and stayed uncovered, in the bed of a river, on the top of a plateau, on a bare threshold above a valley. The package keeps to precisely this role.

Box contents

Inside there are eighteen pieces. The length ranges from 3.8 to 8.9 cm, the height only from 1.9 to 4.1 cm, so the proportion is noticeably flatter than with the other shapes of the same line. It is the low profile that makes the castings into a usable base, over which a path can run or across which water flows.

Water and plateaus

In the bed of a watercourse the flat stones are laid so that their upper edges are roughly in one plane; the surface then looks calm and shallow. On a plateau, on the other hand, it pays off to leave the individual slabs slightly tilted and partly overlapping, so that it can be seen that this is an exposed layer and not paving.

Working the material

The pieces have their color from the factory, applied one by one, so there are small differences of shade between the castings. If the stone is to lie under the surface of water, it is usually a good idea to darken the surface with a glaze before pouring, because wet stone is always richer than dry stone and without this step a bed looks faded. The transition to the terrain around is closed by a fine scatter.

Where the flat shape pays off

A slab lying flat will carry things that would look improbable on a pointed block: a ford, a stone ledge in the current, a resting place by a path or a dry little island in the middle of a shallow. It also makes it possible to hide the edge of a sheet of water, because the surface can be ended elegantly under a low edge without the division between the poured part and the bank being visible.