Backslide

A stepped tower, built tier on tier like something meant to last, has begun to tip backward off its base. An order we trusted to stand has lost its footing. The slide is sudden and unsettling, and we can’t yet tell whether it is a stumble that can be corrected or a shift that will hold. Carved from a single block of Tennessee Pink marble reclaimed from the demolished Australian embassy in Washington, DC, the piece keeps the block’s raw outer edge, a trace of the stone’s earlier life in a building that was itself once considered permanent.