Azul Bahia

A crystalline granite in blue-grey, with a dense speckled grain carrying flows of deep cobalt, sand-gold lines and black points. The colour is not even — there are pale zones and saturated ones — and that is what gives it life.

A true blue in granite is among the rarer things in the stone trade, which makes this a stone that earns a central place in a room. It is a granite in every practical sense, though: very hard, unmoved by kitchen acids and unharmed by a hot pan. At 315 by 200 the slab is wide and suited to an island.

Granite is a crystalline igneous rock — quartz, feldspar and mica cooled slowly at depth — and among the most durable things you can put in a working kitchen. Everyday use does not scratch it, kitchen acids do not touch it, and a hot pan will not scorch it. It is porous to a degree, so the slab is sealed before delivery; resealing every year or two is what keeps oil marks from settling around the hob.

Every slab is one single piece of rock, and no two slabs of the same stone are ever identical. So we drive out to the supplier's yard with you, choose the actual slab there, and mark the layout on it before it is cut.