• About Natural Stone
  • About natural stone

    The beauty and practicability of natural stone is obvious, the versatility is not so apparent. There are a variety of applications where natural stone is used:  the cladding of a building, the flooring of an entrance hall, the tiling of a bathroom, a luxurious kitchen work top, the paving, statues and monuments in  garden, cemeteries and the city and are just a few. When choosing a natural stone material it is important that you select the correct one for the purpose, but it is as important to choose one which suits your aesthetic requirements. If you want a modern clean material which will look the same in ten years or longer then hard stone is the material for you. If you require one that will age with the beauty that only wood, brick and natural stone can offer, then you should choose a soft material. Take for example a kitchen work top: Most people purchase hard stone, granite being the most well known for a clean practical look. However, some people like the look of mature marble¬ - chips and stains are part of a special aged patina. Perhaps the best examples for the ageing qualities of natural stone are monuments or churches. Visit a church in Italy and the patina of the marble will remind you of a good wine; the flavour can only come from age. Many companies actually supply materials which have been aged or stressed to give that look immediately.

    There are thousands of materials available; most can be found on this website. With advent of modern machinery natural stone has become affordable. As for the environment, the natural stone carbon foot print is the lowest of all building materials especially, when a local stone is used.
    There are many types of natural stone, some hard wearing some not, some constant in colour and some not. This website has been designed to help everyone understand what is available in natural stone. When natural stone is considered for a project, marble and granite usually come to mind. However, most stone which are generally thought of as marble and granite are not. Two good examples: Nero Assoluto Zimbabwe, a very popular material for kitchen work tops,is known commercially as a granite when in fact it is a basalt. Nero Maquina is not a marble, but a  limestone. Marbles are  metamorphosed limestone.

    That’s why we have designed our Stone Search with three types of search engines: General search, Petrographic Search and Trade Name Search .

    Click here for more information about how to use our Stone Search