Ted Sturtevant makes a long-lasting product. His cast-concrete countertops – think kitchen, not sidewalk – are made to last close to 75 years.
His manufacturing process is time-consuming, controlled at every step by meticulous procedure.
Yet Sturtevant himself is frenetic at work. In his Newport shop, he’s hard to keep up with. He wants to tell visitors about the production process – largely completed with proprietary equipment. He shows samples. He wants visitors to be excited about the future of his designs.
This concrete isn’t your normal municipal stuff – it’s a blend that’s about three times stronger than the average sidewalk. And it’s not rough concrete, either. Sturtevant uses smooth melamine molds custom designed for each job, then the countertops also get polished with diamond-embedded resin pads.
Over the past two years, E.G. Sturtevant Cast Concrete Countertops & Fine Furnishings has produced about two dozen of the countertops. That might not seem like a lot, but each one can take up to three months to create – depending on the amount of detail involved.
The detail is often what thrills his customers most, Sturtevant said. Customization ranges from colors to design, which is mostly achieved through implanting material. One customer requested stained-glass shards from the historic house; another wanted wood screws.
“Each of those objects has to have a flat side grinded onto it,” Sturtevant said, pointing to sea shells in one of the sample tiles. “So it’s incredibly labor-intensive.”
While a standard countertop with a flat color runs customers $95 per square foot, the design-heavy or experimental countertops – including one with a smattering of golf ball markers – could cost about $165 per square feet.
Sturtevant hadn’t intended to work with concrete. It became an offshoot of a sales counter that he was making for Lara Jean Denim in Newport. It was mostly metal, with pine salvaged from an historic house.
“The whole thing really looked old and I wanted a surface that would have that organic, nice prominence to it,” he said. “I started playing around with concrete and that was essentially the first job.”
It took another year before he had nailed down the process.
There’s no local competition for this kind of design work on countertops, but cast concrete has grown in significance as a high-quality material, Sturtevant said. It all started about 20 years ago in San Francisco, where designer Fu-Tung Cheng started making similar materials.
Since graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 2001 – with a B.A. in business – Sturtevant has created most of the proprietary equipment that he and employee Loring Rowe use for the concrete and other designs, which go beyond countertops.
A few years ago, he was charged with making a display case. He chose a porthole-shaped design, with a glass face and brushed stainless-steel edging. To cut the stainless steel, he created a rotor-based machine using the chain from his bike and a remote-shutter switch from an old camera.
To help craft the countertops, Sturtevant designed a table – now in its second generation – that shakes the bubbles out of the mixture while it settles into the mold.
Sturtevant credits some of his success to his Newport location.
“It’s a high-end product, it’s an expensive product. So where you’re located is critical. You need to have a good-enough base of people who are looking for that level of product,” he said. “Being in Newport – surrounded by Little Compton, Jamestown and some of the areas around here – finding that type of client isn’t tough.”
A graduate of St. George’s School, Sturtevant always has been interested in art. He’d like to manufacture furniture – he favors Scandinavian and Danish designs – but with the countertop business booming, he doesn’t have time to experiment.
“A year ago, my plan was to get this countertop thing up and running, and when I could dedicate more time, I would start designing my first line of furniture,” he said. “That’s ultimately still the goal, but this really took off early on.” •
Company profile: E. G. Sturtevant Cast Concrete Countertops & Fine Furnishings
Owner: Ted Sturtevant
Type of Business: Cast-concrete countertop and furniture manufacturer.
Location: 77 Dr. Marcus Wheatland Boulevard, Newport
Employees: 2
Year Established: 2003
Annual Revenue: WND
