Mont Blue

A cool blue-grey, fairly even, crossed by a broad pale horizontal band with a few fine white lines beneath it. The top of the slab is darker and the bottom lighter — a soft gradation that gives the stone depth without pattern.

This is a cool, modern tone that is hard to find in natural stone, which makes it a choice for a kitchen that wants blue without painting the cabinetry. It sits well against white, against natural oak and against stainless steel. The leathered finish flattens the glare and strengthens the coolness.

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.