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What Stone Carvers Know About Purity
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By Jeremy Amos
Published: Monday, Dec 15, 2025
Michelangelo was once asked how he carved David.
How did he take a block of marble and turn it into something so perfect that people still travel across the world just to stand in front of it?
His answer has been quoted a thousand times, but I don't think most people really understand what he meant:
"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
He didn't say he added anything. He didn't say he built something. He said he removed everything that wasn't the angel.
David was already in there. Michelangelo just took away everything else.
That's not how most people think about creation. We think about adding. Building up. Putting things together.
But stone carvers know something different. They know that purity isn't about addition. It's about subtraction.
You don't make David by adding marble. You make David by removing everything that isn't David.
Title
Subtract to Add
This story comes to mind every time we process hemp.
Because the cannabinoids are already there. CBG, CBD, CBN, CBC - they're in the plant. We don't create them. We don't add them. We don't build them.
We remove everything that isn't them.
That's what extraction is. That's what refinement is. That's what purity actually means.
Not "what did you add?" But "what did you remove?"
And more importantly: "What did you leave behind that shouldn't be there?"
Title
The Industry Gets This Backwards
Walk through a trade show and everyone's talking about what they add. "We add terpenes!" "We add bioavailability enhancers!" "We add this...we add that!"
But nobody's talking about what they removed. What shouldn't be there in the first place.
It's like Michelangelo seeing his sculpture hidden inside the block of marble. "The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material." The beauty is in what you create once you eliminate what doesn't belong.
In hemp processing, the principle is the same. Pesticides don't belong. Heavy metals don't belong. Microbials don't belong.
Purity is the discipline of removal.
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What This Looks Like in Practice
When hemp comes into our facility, it's not pure. Even the best-grown hemp contains things that don't belong.
Every processing step is subtraction:
- Extraction separates cannabinoids from plant material—removing cellulose, chlorophyll, waxes.
- Winterization pulls out fats and waxes that made it through extraction.
- Distillation separates by boiling point—removing the heavies and lights, isolating your cannabinoids.
- Chromatography catches the last impurities.
Not "what can we add to make this stronger?" But "what can we take away to make this cleaner?"
Title
The Difference Between Strong and Pure
The industry confuses these. Someone shows you 1,000mg of CBD. Impressive number. Strong product. But strong isn't pure.
Strength is concentration. Purity is absence. You can have high milligrams with heavy metals still present, pesticides detected, residual solvents above threshold. Strong but not pure.
Michelangelo didn't make David stronger by using more marble. He made David perfect by removing everything that wasn't David.
If you have to choose, purity matters more. Contamination doesn't care about concentration.
Title
What Testing Actually Tests
Potency testing tells you strength—the cannabinoid concentration.
But pesticide, heavy metal, microbial, and residual solvent testing tell you about purity. About what was successfully removed.
When a COA comes back "non-detect"—that's not saying nothing is there. It's saying everything that shouldn't be there has been removed.
Purity testing is absence testing.
Title
The Discipline of Subtraction
Stone carving is patient work. Each strike deliberate. Remove too much and you can't put it back. Remove too little and the sculpture stays trapped.
The art is knowing exactly what to take away and when to stop.
Hemp processing is the same. Over-process and you damage cannabinoids. Under-process and you leave contaminants behind. That takes time, precision, and systems. It takes patience.
The market rewards speed and volume. It doesn't reward the slow work of refinement.
But that's what quality actually is.
Title
What We're Actually Selling
When a brand partners with us, they're not buying cannabinoid addition. They're buying cannabinoid subtraction. They're buying absence. Absence of pesticides, heavy metals, microbials, residual solvents.
That's harder to market than "1,000mg CBD!" But it's more important.
Because you can't formulate contamination out. If it's in your starting material, it's in your finished product.
Purity has to be built through subtraction, not added through formulation.
Title
The Angel in the Marble
Michelangelo looked at marble and saw David. Most people saw... marble. The difference wasn't what Michelangelo added. It was what he saw could be removed.
When hemp comes into our facility, the cannabinoids are already there. We don't create them. We reveal them. By removing everything else. By refining crude into distillate, distillate into isolate, isolate into something pure.
That's subtraction. The discipline of removal. The art of knowing what doesn't belong.
It's what stone carvers have known for thousands of years. And it's what the cannabinoid industry is still learning.
When we're processing hemp, the question isn't "what can we add?" The question is "what's in here that shouldn't be?" And then: "How do we remove it without damaging what should stay?"
Michelangelo didn't make David by adding marble. We don't make pure cannabinoids by adding processes.
We make pure cannabinoids by removing everything that isn't cannabinoids. By refining. By testing. By confirming that what shouldn't be there has been taken away. By carving until we set the angel free.
Looking for a cannabinoid manufacturer? Don't ask "what do you add?" Ask "what do you remove?"
The answer will tell you everything about their understanding of purity.
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