Bianco Cristallo

A bright crystalline white, almost bare, drawn over with fine gold-brown veins — sometimes one long line crossing the slab diagonally, sometimes a soft net of several. The stone's crystallinity gives it a delicate glitter in direct light, and that is what separates it from a flat white.

The six slabs in stock differ noticeably from one another — some nearly all white, some with a pronounced gold vein — which makes this a stone genuinely worth coming to see. In a kitchen it works against white cabinetry, against pale timber, and especially against brass and copper, which carry the vein's colour on.

Quartzite is a metamorphic natural stone: quartz sand compacted under heat and pressure until it became a single crystalline rock. It is harder than marble and usually harder than granite — a knife, salt or a ceramic plate leave no mark — and unlike marble it does not etch from lemon or vinegar. It is porous, though: the slab is sealed before delivery, and resealing every year or two keeps it that way. There is no resin in it as there is in engineered quartz, so a hot pan will not scorch it — a trivet is still a good habit, particularly near an edge or a joint.

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.