| | | Original Style stones that come from the New World were ancient before the Conquistadors re-worked them for theirchurches and great houses. | | that they come to these islands (where few of us live more than 80 miles or so from the sea) as they have always come, by ship - from both hemispheres and every continent of the world save Antarctica and Oceania. Here they make their reappearance, handsome, clean-cut and dressed anew- and millions of years on from when they first embarked upon this journey from the centre of the earth. Yet fine stone remains forever at the height of fashion and in the forefront of style, an eminently practical, extraordinarily durable and arguably most beautiful of solutions for designers and homemakers alike, as these pages show. | | |
| | | Cut from veins or strata long-known fortheir particular characteristics of strength, hue or texture, each block cut from a working is graded by the eye of long experience before being cut to size, shape and thickness, according to its intended use. Some of the resulting tablets may be reworked, to enhance the texture or soften the line of cut before they are graded, matched and made secure for shipment. Their enormous weight means | | |