Black Venom

Black Venom was once sand. Quartz-rich sandstone was carried deep into the earth, under so much heat and pressure that its grains recrystallised and locked into one another. Loose rock became a dense, almost glassy stone: quartzite.

At around 7 on the Mohs scale it is harder than most granites and far harder than marble. The black is the ground; the light veins are minerals that settled in fine cracks.

The stone comes from Brazil and is quarried only in small quantities. In the trade it is often simply called Venom. Large slabs of it clad kitchen islands and entire walls.

On the case, such a slab becomes a piece that exists only once: we split it to around one millimetre and polish it until the grain begins to shine.