Colma Stone Cutting Shop Offers Journey Back in Time The Times 07/13/83 by Paula Harrington
		IF YOU WANT to journey back to the age of Michelangelo but don't happen to have a time machine handy, you might take a trip instead to the Colma stone cutting shop of Elio Fontana and his son Mark. The techniques of working with stone have changed somewhat since the Renaissance, but the art of making blocks of rock come alive has not died. These days, automatic contour and diamond saws, stencils and sandblasters are used instead of hammers and chisels. Still, the undeniably Italian sense of stone work remains. It does not take an over-active imagination to feel transported back to the village of Sant'Andrea north of Florence, the birthplace of Elio's father and Mark's grandfather. According to church records, the Fontana family took up the stone trade there at least as early as 1800. To this day, says Mark, the finest marble fields in the world are in that area of Italy, where Michelangelo once quarried his marble. For the past 60 years, V. Fontana &		Co. has been in Colma instead of Italy. Its plant sits across from the Italian Cemetery, however, and that is probably the next best thing to being in the Old Country. Thirty-year-old Mark Fontana grew up in the business, starting work in the shop when he was only 14. As tradition would have it, he has taken over from his father, who recently retired. Elio Fontana had worked in the family business sicne he was 16. He, in turn, took over from his father, Valerio Fontana, who founded the company in 1921 as a small hammer and chisel workshop. Under Elio's leadership, a large granite and marble factory went up in place of old wooden workshop. New machinery was introduced, and the shop branched out into other areas besides the customary cemetery monuments and vaults. Mark says it was the automatic contour saw, diamond saw and Go to Page 2