Creating a New Niche from the Past

By K. Schipper

BERNALILLO, N.M. – Just as it’s a long way from the suburbs of New York to the outskirts of Albuquerque, N.M., there’s been a long way around to stone work for Labe Kopelov since the days he first learned about bricklaying from an uncle.

Labe Kopelov (click photo)Kopelov, a man who enjoys working with his hands and his head, Kopelov ended up with several different masonry related careers in his life, including constructing buildings from adobe. He really didn’t get serious about starting a cut-stone shop until his son and business partner, Kino, expressed an interest in becoming an architectural stone carver.

Then, in 2006, a friend working on a San Francisco restoration project raised the possibility of Kopelov Cut Stone Inc., doing part of the job – if the Kopelovs could match the stone on a building done more than a century ago.

Rather than settling for a “close-enough” option, Labe Kopelov found the quarry that produced the stone originally and the rest, as they say, is history – or, put a bit better, historical.

NATURAL THINGS

Labe Kopelov says masonry became a part of his life while growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s.

“I had an Uncle Joe, my father’s brother, who was a masonry contractor,” he says. “I never worked for him, and neither did my brothers, but we were all pretty much influenced by him.”Kino Kopelov (click photo)

The influence was so strong that, in 1974, Kopelov relocated to West Virginia, where his older brother was living. The brother decided to open a masonry business of his own, and called on his brother to partner with him in the venture.

“I helped him start the business, but the partnership really didn’t work, and in 1976, I ended up here in this area near Albuquerque,” he says.

The senior Kopelov admits to having a lifelong fascination with history and especially old buildings. In New Mexico he was particularly drawn to what he calls “the adobe culture.”

“I like building things from scratch and try to do things that are natural,” he explains. “I could go out into the hills and get stone and carve it into corner blocks and make my own adobes.”

However, life intruded into Kopelov’s adobe phase. He and wife Rae Miller started a family.