During the Renaissance, marble was quarried by inserting wooden pegs into naturally occurring cracks in the rock, then pouring water onto the pegs to make them swell. Eventually the rock would split, liberating a piece of marble. The principle tool of modern quarrying is a wire cable 1cm in diameter, fitted at 5cm intervals with diamond-studded collars. Holes are drilled in the mountain, the cable is threaded through the holes to form a loop, and the loop is driven at high speed by an electric motor.

In an open pit quarry, the marble is extracted in rectangular blocks approximately measuring 8' x 8' x 16'. Once the sides and back of a block have been separated from the mountain using the wire cable, the bottom is undercut from the front using a chain saw that translates along a horizontal rail.

Eventually the block splits away from the wall and topples to the ground. Marble is hard, but it is also brittle. To prevent the 80 ton block from shattering on impact, a bed of rubble is prepared beforehand. Too large to transport, this block will be cut into smaller blocks measuring 4' x 4' x 8' and weighing 10 tons. The marble blocks will then be transported by truck to a sawmill.

Once at the sawmill, marble blocks are sliced into slabs by a gang of parallel circular saws. The saws move slowly at the speed of 1 meter per hour. If the blocks aren't well squared, much time and marble is wasted in the sawing process.