I recently visited factories in Carrara with a good client to look for some nice Statuario marble to deck out a large bathroom in London he was working on. We had a specific request from his client to make sure that the back ground was white and the markings crisp but not too chunky and Statuario veins can get very thick and very heavy.

I have attached images of some of the material we saw and considered. The main contenders were two blocks. Both were freshly cut and being polished. The first of the two blocks had a light vein, not too wide and they ran across the width so generally good for a book match with length of the slab running up/down the wall. The second bundle of slabs had two nice medium veins diagonally across the slab and a good clean white background colour.

During our trip to the stone Show in Verona this week we popped into the factory charged with cutting our blocks of Atlantic when they arrive from the quarry. The factory we use has the new type of gang saw that uses diamond wires instead of the traditional diamond toothed blades. These gang saws can cut a block of Atlantic in just a few hours instead of the 5-6 days the olds saws could manage.

We have liked and sold the Beaulieu limestone for many years. Light and creamy in colour with occasional fossils and veins; it has that quintessential limestone appearance.

Being a very hard and close grained limestone it is suitable for all internal applications from a bathroom wall to shopping centre floor. Not only do we have the relevant BS EN test data for you, Beaulieu has an incredible project history spanning many years. A great reference can be found in the Pompidou Centre where 4000sqm was installed in the Forum Des Halles in 1972. More recently we supplied Park’ N Shop, Hong Kong and the MOD building here in London.

As well as all this great history, the stone is quarried and cut less than 400 miles away from London, so very environmentally friendly for projects here in the Capital.