Kunz’s Two Ton Trophy:
When The Drake Company and Tiffany & Company Brought
Petrified Wood To The Big Apple

by Daniel E. Russell

(New York Times, 11 September 1888)

A TWO TON GEM
TIFFANY’S WONDERFUL BLOCK OF AGATIZED WOOD

An interesting section of petrified wood, which stands a short distance behind the main entrance door of Tiffany’s, will not fail to attract the attention of scientists as well as those fond of looking at curious things. The block is an immense one, weighing 2,400 pounds and measuring 40½ by 33 inches and 34 inches high.

It is of agatized wood, and came from the petrified forests at Chalcedony Park, Arizona, near Corriza, and 20 miles from the nearest railroad station. It was brought on to this city through the efforts of Mr George F Kunz of Tiffany’s, and is the largest block of the kind ever brought east and polished. Mr. Kunz had no idea he could secure so large a section for the inspection of the New York people. Other pieces of the petrified wood have been brought on from these forests, but none which approached this specimen in size. The wood is used to make up into table tops and handsome wood ornamentation. The polished surface shows a beautiful blending of red and black, and in some respects resembles the red wood of the big California trees. Some idea of the hardness of the wood can be gained when it is known that 200 pieces of marble can be sawed up while one piece of agatized wood is being cut.

The piece of wood is very valuable, and for awhile was placed outside the door on the street. It is the biggest gem that has ever been placed outside of Tiffany’s unguarded. It is needless to say that no one tried to walk off with the great block.”

In 1853 a United States Army expedition under the command of Lt Amiel Whipple, engaged in the herculean task of trying to find a route for the proposed transcontinental railroad, discovered a vast tract of Arizona desert littered with enormous tonnages of fossilized wood. With the opening of the historic Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, the “petrified forest” was opened to tourism, albeit in a primitive fashion. In 1881, a proper rail station was created to serve the area and the town of Holbrook came into being.

The petrified forest itself became known as “Chalcedony Park” (a name which would eventually evolve into “Petrified Forest National Park”).

With improved access to the region came the commercial exploitation of what was glibly described in the press as “millions of tons” of petrified wood.

One of the leading commercial concerns involved in the use of petrified wood as an ornamental stone was the Drake Company, of St Paul Minnesota and Sioux Falls, South Dakota (in its earliest days, merely “Dakota”, as the state of South Dakota was not admitted into the Union until 1889). The Drake Company was owned by James H Drake, and had been successfully involved in producing granite columns and paving blocks from Minnesota granite. The company had demonstrated considerable skill in polishing large masses of hard stone.

Prior to 1884, the Drake Company opened a large, state-of-the art stone cutting and polishing plant at Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The site selection was based on two important factors: the local availability of “Sioux Falls Jasper” a multicolored fine grained quartz suitable for ornamental use, and access to water power from the falls of the Sioux River (for which the town was cunningly named).

The Sioux Falls factory became the center for Drake Company’s processing of petrified wood as well. There, “sections of these trees, several feet in diameter, have been sawed and polished and mounted in metal as table-tops, and have been found in demand at the highest prices ever paid for decorative material. It is intended to further utilize the material in clock cases, mantel decorations, and other ornamental work.” (Anonymous, 1890b).

As early as 1886, a considerable market existed for Arizona petrified wood. Kunz stated

“A Russian dealer recently paid five hundred dollars for a piece twenty-eight inches in diameter and thirty inches in length, to be cut into table-tops. A large lot was recently sent abroad for cutting, and we shall soon have a new decorative stone which will possess what very few now in use do the proper hardness.” (Kunz, 1886 p 362)

A classic example of petrified wood from Chalcedony Park (aka Petrified Forest National Park) Photograph by John H Betts

A few years later, Kunz provided a detail account of the methods used by the Drake Company at their Sioux Falls facility to grind and polish massive pieces of petrified wood:

In cutting large surfaces of hard materials, such as agate, jasper, and quartz, no better work has been done than that of the Drake Company of Sioux Falls, South Dak. Agate-cutting, as already stated, has been carried on for over three hundred years in the Oberstein district in Germany. But little attention, however, has been paid to the cutting of large masses, because no agates are found over a foot in diameter, and the banding is not such as to offer any inducement for polishing. Perfected methods for sawing and polishing such material have resulted from experiments recently conducted by the Drake Company. They have undertaken the preparation of agatized wood for the market, and have succeeded in producing a large number of columns from 8 to 12 inches wide, and 2 to 3 feet high, cut transversely across the tree, so that the heart is visible on two sides, with radiations in all directions; they also cut sections measuring respectively 13, 17, 24, and 25 inches in diameter, and so highly polished that when turned with the back to the light, they form perfect mirrors. All the specimens are brilliant in color and rival any work ever done in hard material. One of the finest sections of an agatized trunk was sent to New York in the autumn of 1888. It measured 40 ½ by 34 inches on the top, was 36 inches high, and weighed 2 ½ tons. The top was four months undergoing the process of grinding down and polishing; it is a deep, rich red, yellow, black, mottled and variegated, and beautifully polished. This is probably the finest piece of hard-stone polishing that has been done in the United States. The company has removed from the forest 180 tons of material, and 20 tons of sections have been ground down to show its characteristic beauty. The process is briefly as follows: The faces of the rough sections are irregular, and must be worn down to a smooth surface. To accomplish this they are set in circular form in what is known as the “Drake Beds,” about ten feet in diameter, composed of various-sized sections of the material set by the use of a spirit level, in order to secure an even face. They are then cemented together, and large slabs of Sioux Falls quartzite are attached to two arms of a powerful vertical shaft. These large, flat stones, which are almost as hard as the silicified wood and extend the full length of the arms, are revolved about the bed by a stream of water, with crushed quartzite reduced to the size of a pea. The silicified wood, being tougher than quartzite, soon wears grooves in these large stones, which are frequently reversed, and sometimes discarded for new ones. This initial stage of the work continues for nearly forty hours, when the quartzite stones are replaced by large sections of the silicified trees, which have been previously worn upon the bed, and these are revolved sometimes for one week, sometimes for two weeks, and fed with sand of quartzite until, by abrasion rather than cutting, a face is disclosed on the bed, which, for the first time, indicates the true colorings and quality of the material. From these beds, each of which requires about thirty horse-power when doing the best work, the specimens are taken up, and re-bedded on a car thirty feet long and eight feet wide. The success of the operation depends upon the exactness of face of the different pieces. This car moves by cogs and concentric rings, the outermost of which is six feet in diameter, revolving at forty revolutions, and here is continued the sand quartzite feed, in order to wear down any irregularity of resetting upon the car. This operation usually lasts for two days, when the bed is cleansed, and diminutive globules of chilled shot-iron are rolled under the rings. Then follows treatment with emery, beginning with the coarser grade and ending with the finer. After a week of this work, the bed is thoroughly washed, the rings removed, and large wheels, made from blocks of bass-wood clamped together, presenting a rough surface by being set across the grain of the wood, are placed in position. The speed, both in the movement of the car and of the wheel, is now increased, and tin oxide is used to burnish the surface, which is brought to a mirror-like finish by means of tripoli, fed to felt-covered wheels, that are revolved at the rate of 300 revolutions a minute. (Kunz, 1892)

In 1889, the Drake Company presented “four slabs of agatized wood from Chalcedony Park” to the Smithsonian Institute (Anonymous, 1890a, p. 114). In the same year, at the Paris Exposition, they exhibited “Arizona petrified wood, embracing table-tops, ornamental articles, jewelry, polished section showing perfect heart and bark of trees, and tiling for interior decoration.” Of Arizona’s petrified wood, the official report by the US Commissioners to the Exposition noted:

It is a scientific wonder because of its remarkable preservation and solidity, and it appeals to the connoisseur of high art and the beautiful because of the exquisite interblending of every color of the rainbow, arising from the intermixture of various oxides in solution. After several years of experiment a process has been found for sawing and polishing this material, which is very hard and cannot be easily marred by steel or stained by acids. It is the testimony alike of experts and explorers that for perfection of structure and the wondrous-varieties of its colorings this material, commonly known as petrified wood, is beyond comparison in beauty with that heretofore displayed from other localities. (Anonymous, 1890b, p. 414)

A specimen of petrified wood bearing the Drake Company label, a souvenir given away or sold at the Paris Exposition of 1889. A Clarion Minerals specimen, on exhibit at Tucson in 2008. Photograph by Jolyon Ralph

Arizona petrified wood and the Drake Company were both well represented at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, held in Chicago.

…the Drake Company, of St. Paul, Minn., made a superb display of the material sawn into slabs and polished, to form table tops and other pieces of furniture. The beauty of these polished agate surfaces cannot be adequately described, and they naturally attracted the admiring attention of thousands.

The Drake Company, which has made a special business of preparing the silicified wood for decorative purposes, has erected costly machinery for sawing, shaping and polishing the material at Sioux Falls in South Dakota. There is nothing in the whole range of nature’s mineral productions that exceeds these superb specimens in beauty, if, indeed, there is anything capable of being adapted for similar purposes that can compare with it. Extensive as the deposit is, it contains comparatively little material sufficiently perfect to be adapted for the production of large and flawless slabs, and the comparatively limited supply, to which should be added the cost of working the material on account of its extreme hardness, must always render it a costly luxury, but one which must enhance in value with years from its growing rarity, its practical indestructibility and surpassing beauty. (Anonymous, 1894)

At the Universal Exposition held in Paris in 1900, Drake & Company offered displays of “petrified wood, found near Holbrook, Arizona, cut for ornamental purposes, table tops” (Anon. 1900, p. 329, also pp. 395 and 397)

In the 1880’s, when America wished to pay tribute to French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bertholdi for his gift of the Statue of Liberty, Tiffany & Co was commissioned to design and execute an appropriate testimonial to mark the arrival of the disassembled statue in New York City Harbor. New York City newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer – an immigrant who had championed the Statue of Liberty project at a time when it appeared it would never come off – selected Arizona petrified wood as its footing. Kunz recalled:

A piece of this material was selected by Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, to form the base for the beautiful silver center-piece, which is being made by Messrs Tiffany & Co, to be given as a testimonial to the eminent sculptor, F. A. Bartholdi. This base is a low truncated pyramid, eleven inches square at the base, nine inches at the top, and seven and half inches high, and is made of a single section of a tree. It was chosen on account of its superior hardness and the warmth and pleasing combination of its colors. Besides, as the designer remarked, it is eminently fitting that the testimonial should rest “on a solid American base.” (Kunz, 1886)

Tiffany’s designer came up with a globe, surmounted with an iconic replica of the Lady Liberty’s hand holding the torch, set on a base of bright red petrified wood for the final design. (The piece of petrified wood used for the base of the Bertholdi tribute was not part of the two-ton mass later exhibited at Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue store).

Lester Ward, a paleobotanist with the United States Geological Survey, was assigned to make a brief survey of the “petrified forest.” He noted in his memoirs:

Many years ago the firm of Drake & Co., of Sioux Falls, undertook the work of manufacturing table tops, mantels, clock cases, pedestals, paper weights, and other articles of furniture and decoration out of these sections of agatized wood, by polishing the smooth surfaces and cutting them into the desired forms. I understand that Tiffany & Co., of New York, obtained through this company the beautiful pieces used by them for such purposes. I visited their house at the time they were engaged in this work, and through the courtesy of Mr. George F. Kunz was shown some of the raw material that they then had in hand, consisting of several sections of immense trunks, of the most brilliant colors. While in the park the present season my teamster informed me that he was employed for a long time hauling these trunks out of the upper forest to Carrizo station. Although, according to all accounts, many carloads of it were shipped to the East, he said that there was a larger quantity left at the station that was not shipped than all that was removed at that time. As scarcely any of this remains at the station now, I asked him what had become of it, and he said it had been carried off little by little by anybody that wanted a piece. (Ward, 1918, p. 93)

Ward’s field report on “Chalcedony Park” would form an important part of the supporting documents used by the United States Congress to introduce a bill to protect more than 340 square miles of “petrified forest” first as a National Monument (1906) and later as a National park (1962). It is of interest that one of the most ardent supporters of the movement to preserved the site was none other than George F. Kunz. An aesthete in the classic late Victorian mold Kunz was President of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, an organization that advocated for the preservation of scenic vistas, parklands, and historic buildings both in New York State and across the nation. In fact, Kunz would be appointed to the Special Committee to help push the bill for the preservation of the Petrified Forest through Congress.

Petrified wood as an ornamental stone was a relatively short lived phenomenon, killed off not so much by Petrified Forest preservation movement as by the change in tastes among the few people affluent enough to afford large tables and fireplaces made of the material.

---

Bibliography


Anonymous (1890a) Report Of The U. S. National Museum, Under Тhe Direction Of
The Smithsonian Institution, For The Year Ending June З0 1889.
US Government Printing Office Washington DC 1890

Anonymous (1890b) Reports of the United States Commissioners to the Universal Exposition of 1889 at Paris Volume I Report Of The Commissioner-General
US Government Printing Office 1890.

Anonymous (1891) “The Dakota Metropolis” New England Magazine New Series Vol 4 1891 p 349

Anonymous “The Petrified Forest of Arizona” Manufacturer and Builder
Vol 26 December 1894 p 103

Anonymous (1900) Official CATALOGUE Of Exhibitors In The United States Sections Of The International Universal Exposition PARIS 1900

Kunz, George F (1886) Agatized And Jasperized Wood Of Arizona. The Popular Science Monthly Vol. XXVIII. November, 1885, To April, 1886. p 362

Kunz, George Frederick (1892) Gems and Precious Stones of North America. The Scientific Publishing Company, New York NY

Ward, Lester F Glimpses Of The Cosmos Vol 6 New York 1918 p. 93

---

Completed: 14 February 2008