The company specializes in residential work, along with some commercial projects, in the New York Metropolitan area and beyond. “In addition to primary residences, we’re doing a lot of second homes for people,” explained owner Jonathan Tibett, who founded Precision Stone in 1983. “These are in places like the Hamptons, but also as far away as Florida, Texas or even California. A lot of our work is covered in Architectural Digest.”

Sophisticated modeling technology has proven to be extremely beneficial to the operation. “We can visualize an entire room before a single piece of stone is cut,” Tibett said. “We take photos of the slabs, and we can move and replace the images however we want. In the end, we will know exactly where we want to cut each slab. It takes away the possibility of errors or having to cut something twice.”

The company completes stonework for a range of styles, from modern cantilevered panel projects to homes reminiscent of the Gilded Age, with ornate carved elements throughout. “We’ll do a digital model, and then it will be processed on a CNC, and then carvers will finish it by hand,” Tibett said.

Inside the shop

The fabrication facility at Union Marble & Granite, which was founded in 1990 by Ricardo Alvarez, has a range of technology in place. This includes three laser-guided bridge saws from GMM for cutting material to size. Meanwhile, more complex cutting is completed using a waterjet from Flow.

The facility is also equipped with a Wesley profile milling machine from Germany and Zattoni radial arm polishers for edge work.

The most critical element in the stoneworking shop, however, is the skill and ingenuity of the staff. From perfect mitered edges to large-scale radial pieces to ornate cubic work, the crew at Precision Stone and Union Marble & Granite routinely finds solutions to some of most challenging issues -- often creating finished products and applications that have never been seen before.