Ascale Macchia Vecchia Gold

A reading of Macchia Vecchia, a marble from the Carrara region of Italy: an ivory white ground crossed by broad, assertive grey veins with gold and orange notes inside them. This is not a delicate pattern — the vein is wide and sets a direction, which is precisely the point.

Ascale is large-format sintered porcelain from the Spanish maker TAU Cerámica: a blend of minerals fired under high pressure and heat into a dense, non-porous slab. It absorbs nothing and never needs sealing, and resists scratching, staining, heat and UV, so it works on a worktop, on a floor and on an exterior façade alike. That directionality is worth planning around: two adjacent slabs can be opened like a book so the vein carries from one into the next, which repays the effort on a wall or a splashback. Supplied polished or in Velvet vein-touch, in 2 and 1.2 cm on a 162 × 324 cm slab and 0.6 cm on a 160 × 320 cm slab.