Of Heart and Stone

It’s that time of year when the lure of a crackling fire in the hearth warms the soul. The grand stone masterpieces created by Lew French have that same effect on a person with or without the fire blazing. There is movement and power in his designs. Their energy draws you in visually and while entranced you instinctively run your hand over the rocks.

While my house does not boast a fireplace it is full of stones and decorating with them happened quite by accident. However, they have become permanent appointments of our home. With good reason French needs to store his rock and stone in rented fields. Luckily, our collection is not as extensive and I am able to fill bowls and tuck them into shelves throughout our home.

How many times have you bent down to pick up a rock to admire it’s simple beauty? Maybe while you were on vacation or just your daily walk? Or do your children do this? Mine did and still do albeit they are young adults now. My parents have a cottage on the south shore of Lake Erie and all three of our children grew up vacationing there.

My mom and dad’s house is filled with rocks from the lake that their grandchildren have collected over the years. As soon as they could walk they were always bringing rocks into the house and eventually the overflow began coming home with us, our truck riding a little lower on the way home. I have two huge stacks in my garage of large black rocks laced with pyrite. Our son Zach had a passion for the ‘fool’s gold’ and would swim for hours in water well above his head searching for rocks that apparently spoke to him. Some of them are 18″ around and weigh 10 pounds or more. My dad, would always say “Zach what are you going to do with those?” to which our 10 year old always replied without fail “I don’t know, I just like them”.

As Lew French stated to Emily Zeugner of NPR Radio, “I find it interesting that people will almost like ‘confide’ in me that they have this thing with stone…they go to the beach, they pick up stones, or they are out in the field they pick up a stone, it’s like we have this secret thing with stone. I think it’s a lot deeper than that, I think there is this real connection. There is something about stone that is powerful, it seems to have this energy or purpose where it has this emanation of power, almost.”
His comments truly struck a chord with me and made me smile because it’s so true. These basic, inanimate objects do have an energy. The ones scattered all through our house also have memories and a permanent place in the decorating of our home…and my heart.