Cast stone
material simulating natural stone
Cast stone or reconstructed stone is a refined artificial stone, a form of precast concrete. It is used as a building material to simulate natural-cut masonry in architectural features such as facings and trim; for statuary; and for garden ornaments. It may replace natural building stones including limestone, brownstone, sandstone, bluestone, granite, slate, and travertine. Cast stone can be made from white or grey cements, manufactured or natural sands, crushed stone or natural gravels, and can be coloured with mineral colouring pigments. It is cheaper and more uniform than natural stone, and allows transporting the bulk materials and casting near the place of use, which is cheaper than transporting and carving very large pieces of stone.
History
The earliest known use of cast stone was in the Cité de Carcassonne, France, in about 1138. It was first used extensively in London in the late 19th century and gained widespread acceptance in America in the 1920s.
One of the earliest developments in the industry was Coade stone, a fired ceramic form of stoneware. Another well-known variety was Victoria stone, which is composed of three parts finely crushed Mount Sorrel (Leicestershire) granite to one of Portland cement, carefully mechanically mixed and poured into moulds. After setting the blocks are placed in a solution of silicate of soda to indurate and harden them.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cast stone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.