Dover White

A cool white ground with an icy cast, spread with a branching breccia web in black, grey and cream — lines that ring pale clasts and produce a pattern that looks very nearly drawn by hand. The contrast is high and the stone is never quiet.

This is a stone that decides a kitchen. It wants flat cabinetry in a single colour and a splashback in the same stone or in plain glass — any added pattern will fight it. The two slabs in stock are the same size in the two finishes, so they can be combined: polished on the island, leathered on the run.

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.