Session: 1234567891011121314151617         Page 501502503504505506507508509510511512513514515516517518519520521522523524525526527528529530531532533534535536537538539540541542543544545546547548549 of 755

When you take dark granite and you smooth it--or hone it, as the technical word is--it is pretty dark. If you polish it, it even gets darker. I didn't want a polished skin. I wanted a rough surface. When you make it rough, it gets light.

So we had to find a source for dark granite, and I sent Clarence Hopper to a mine down in Africa. I knew there was Swedish granite that was black, and Ruth and I went to Sweden and Norway, looking at black granite. And Nagori [?], the man who did that piece of sculpture--and that's granite--said: “There's that kind of black granite in Japan.” And I knew the sculptor, and I got hold of him to find out whether there was a quarry in Japan that had enough of that granite to do the whole side. It turned out they could do pieces, but they couldn't do big pieces. I sent Hopper over to look into that.

There was one other source--I've forgotten now. Scandinavia, South Africa, Japan. Maybe that's it. Right in the middle of that whole thing Paley came in one day and he said: “I got a better idea about the skin.”

When he came in, I was on the phone, and I told the person I was talking with: “Give me a minute and I'll call you back.” And I was just putting the phone down, when he was standing in front of my desk and said he had a better idea. I said: “Great.”

And he said: “Babe thinks it ought to be pink.” That pink granite would give it the distinction that it needed. [laughter] I knew better than to discard it out of hand.

Meanwhile I had appointed three guys--two guys and myself--as a committee on aesthetics