Choosing a slab: veining, book-matching and the cut you cannot undo

Every slab is a single event. The vein that runs through it happened once and will never repeat, which means the layout has to be drawn onto the stone itself before a saw is switched on.

I mark the island first, because it is the piece people stand around and touch. Everything else is cut from what remains, and the offcuts are planned into the splashback so the movement continues upward instead of stopping at the worktop.

A polished finish throws light back at you and shows every fingerprint. Honed stone absorbs the room instead, and the veining reads as depth rather than gloss. In a dark kitchen it is the difference between a surface and a shadow.

A twenty millimetre slab mitred to a sixty millimetre edge gives weight without mass. The mitre has to be glued so the vein carries around the corner, which only works if the fabricator knows the layout you drew in the yard. This is why I go to the cutting, not just the choosing.