Madeira

A warm, deep taupe-brown spread with a fine net of white-green veins branching in every direction. The ground is not even — there are lighter and darker zones that give it depth — and the white net picks them out.

This is one of the warmest stones in the book, and one of the few that give a kitchen a genuine earth tone without going to black. It sits very well against cream, olive or walnut cabinetry, and against brass. Leathered, the brown deepens and the surface becomes velvety and very forgiving.

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.