Working with natural stone slabs
With the trend to colourful, natural stones as kitchen worktops, we have seen more and more fascinating slabs come through the workshop.
With big, bold patterns being so popular, we are facing the challenges that come with the use of natural stones. We have just taken delivery of some lovely slabs of Brecchia Fantasia marble for a very large kitchen installtion with some fascinating features. It is not often we see six slabs of the same natural material, so I thought it was an ideal opportunity to take some pictures and talk through some of the challenges.
Pattern
Take a look at these two images – they are of different parts of the same slab. You couldn’t get a better demonstration of the uselessness of small samples with stones like this – a 100mm square is irrelevant and misleading. Good photos of the entrire slab are a great help, and far better than small samples, even where they are available, but nothing beats seeing the stone for yourself. We often welcome our customers – and our customers’ customers – to see whole slabs at our Charlwood warehouse.
Wild patterns like these are formed when the rock is fractured. Water with minerals dissolved in it invades the resultant cracks and lays down the colours over time. These slabs show signs of many different periods of fracture and filling. Marble worktops like these show aeons of history right on their polished faces!
Vein-matching and book-matching
There is a lot of confusion about these terms and even people in the solid stone worktop industry sometimes use them wrongly. Broadly speaking, vein-matching always refers to the installation; book-matching usually refers to the slabs themselves.
Vein-matching is the art of installing stone – in our case worktops, splashbacks, upstands, sills and downstands – in such a way that veins in one piece connect with veins in the adjoining piece.
Sometimes that is because they have been cut from the same slab in the first place, but often our stonemasons have to use different pieces to give a continuous vein. We are proud of what we do in this area.
The picture here shows vein-matching in a splashback join.
Book-matching is a way of cutting slabs so that the polished faces come from the two sides of the same cut.
Book-matching refers to the slabs themselves, but also opens up possibilities in installation. Classic examples would be in walnut veneers on the doors of a traditional wardrobe, or in stone as on this island in Calacatta Gold Quartz. You can see the way the vein pattern has symmetry around a central axis – like the pages of a book.
When book-matching helps vein-matching
To be honest, it is not that often that we create book-matched islands or splashbacks, though when we do, book-matched slabs are obviously essential. More often, we buy a book-matched slab in a set of three or four slabs just for the variety of vein direction which will give us more and better options to achieve vein-matching.
We love it when we do have a real book-matched job on, though. The Calacatta Macchia Vecchia slabs in the image here were for just such a project.
A big project in Brecchia Fantasia
And so to the job we are working on: this large scale kitchen project working in conjunction with Nick Geard Furniture incorpiorates two or more book-matched elements and some standard vein matching two. Working in 20mm natiral marble, the quality of installation of the units will be paramount. The material is stunning – incredibly rich in colour and structural detail. Here are the six slabs, and you can see the vein matching pretty clearly.
As you can see, it isn’t always as precise an art as might appear. That is where the stonemasons’ skill will come into play – minimising any irregularities in the slabs to get the very best possible result in our customer’s home. Watch this space – I really look forward to photographing this kitchen when it is done.
