Why we never cast
Cast stone and solid stone are not the same material, whatever the showroom says. The difference rarely shows on the day you buy. It shows in a hundred years, which is the only timescale that interests us.
What cast stone actually is
Cast stone begins as crushed rock, sometimes real marble dust, mixed with a binder and poured into a mould. Resin composites work the same way with a plastic binder. The result can look convincing. It can be made quickly, in any quantity, at a fraction of the cost, and for a great many purposes that is a perfectly sensible thing to buy.
It is simply not the same object. A cast piece is an aggregate held together by glue. A carved piece is one continuous mass of rock that was made underground over a span of time nobody can really picture.
Why the difference shows up late
A binder is the weak part, and weather finds the weak part. Freeze and thaw work into it. Ultraviolet light degrades resin. The surface can craze, chalk, or discolour unevenly while the aggregate underneath stays put, which is why old cast pieces often look tired in a way that has nothing to do with honest wear.
Solid stone weathers too. That is not a defect, it is the point. Marble softens at the edges and grows a patina. Granite holds its line for a very long time. Sandstone breathes and warms. What none of them do is come apart at a seam, because there is no seam.
The thing about light
Marble is slightly translucent. Light enters the surface, scatters a short way inside, and comes back out. That is the reason a marble face reads as skin rather than paint, and it is the reason carvers have chosen it for the human figure for thousands of years.
A cast piece cannot do this. Light stops at the surface. Stand the two side by side in a window and the difference is not subtle.
How to tell, in a showroom
Look for a mould seam, usually on a flank or behind a limb. Look for bubbles, which occur in a pour and never in a carve. Ask whether an identical one exists, because a mould exists to be reused. Look at colour: real stone carries grain, vein and inconsistency, and a suspiciously even tone usually means pigment.
Then put your hand on it. Stone is cold and stays cold. Ask the weight. Ask what happens at a chip: solid stone shows the same material all the way through, a cast piece shows a different colour underneath.
The most useful question is the plainest one. Ask what it is made of, and ask for that in writing.
Where we stand
We carve from a single solid block. Never cast, never reconstituted, never resin. Every work is unique to its block, because the block is unique, and because a mould has never touched it.
This costs more and takes longer. We think that is the whole transaction. If you are buying permanence, the material has to be the permanent thing.