Interiors : Andy McLean
For me, stone has represented an absolutely fantastic opportunity because it gives you such an unparalleled diversity of products. Unlike a printed image on a ceramic tile it has depth of character with a real wow factor. Each tile is unique with a wonderful tactile quality about it. After all, nature does it so much better.
When I first joined Stephen Neall in 1985 as an understudy to Stephen Gee we didn’t specify much stone. At the time we only displayed one kitchen with natural stone work surfaces and that was Cornish granite. It was rare that a client would ask for it. Post formed laminate, tiles or Corian were the preferred materials of the day.
My introduction to the incredible diversity of stone came from visiting the stone yards at Joe Rotherham when I wanted marble for bathrooms. Exposure to new and exciting materials, especially granites, opened up new design opportunities to me for the modern Allmilmo kitchen product I worked with at Stephen Neall at that time.
Through my continued search for new natural materials I met Jason Cherrington of Lapicida, selling stone and marble tiles, some 15 years ago. It was predominantly travertine and moleanos – purely safe colour combinations. And today for a lot of people that’s still the way to go – they like the look of more exotic materials but don’t know if they can live with it.
One of the early problems I experienced with hard floor coverings, stone and ceramic, was that they are cold, but under floor heating has transformed them. Most new buildings are specified with under floor heating these days. It’s a pleasant heat – uniform. You don’t get the pockets of heat and cold that you get with radiators. It’s another development that has helped move stone into new areas.
We have over the years increased the number of both kitchen and bathroom displays featuring natural stone in our showroom, a reflection of the increase in client demand for this product.
Our association with Jason at Lapicida has grown as he has moved and grown, his ever increasing diversity of materials, elaborate displays and large areas of product has helped to stimulate clients’ interest in and appreciation of the stone available to them and its incredible journey through the millennia to arrive as they see it today.
Testament to this is that we’ve recently completed a private commission for a guest bathroom in Verde Bamboo, an incredibly striking material in a vivid green colour. Not a stone we would have been able to specify in the past.
We are often asked to work on full house design projects, these might include pool surrounds, steam rooms, poolside bars, etc, as well as the usual requests for bespoke kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms and some studies. Some of our work is based locally to Harrogate, but the majority is much wider afield, including, of course, London. It is all based on recommendations from past or present clients and our wide net of interior designers and architects.
We invariably become heavily involved with our clients. This will in many cases involve taking them to our suppliers’ yards, such as Rotherhams, to actually pick out their very own stone from the slabs in stock. Rotherhams will then take a digital image of the slab and show you on a computer how each piece of the worktop will be cut. You can see how a particular feature will appear in the finished kitchen.
In some instances we may even take clients to Milan for the international furniture fair where they can see an unrivalled selection of furniture, lighting, bathroom products and, of course, stone – weather that be in new kitchen work surfaces or new bathroom products such as carved stone basins and baths.
Although we try to guide our clients in their choices, we are always reminded of just whose house the completed project belongs to and to that end we also try to steer them to be relatively eclectic with product selection, encouraging them to stamp their own style on the scheme.
To see stone locally we take clients to Lapicida’s 1,500m2 showroom here in Harrogate, where they instantly get that wow factor. It’s a very impressive place with stunning displays. We will often book private rooms to discuss multi-room projects at length, simply wandering out into the vast showroom to look at stone. This impressive site, a real testament to Jason the proprietor’s incredible vision and passion for stone, is a fabulous design tool for us as it quite often helps us to guide clients towards more interesting stone and combinations of stone.
One recent example of this was when a client who had requested a white bathroom scheme for a Georgian style country house was so taken by one of the displays at Lapicida that we revised the entire design and based it around large slabs of book matched Paonazzo white and purple veined honed marble – a stunning effect and an improved budget for the room.
Another major advantage of Jason’s showroom is the scale of the displays. With stone, small samples can often be misleading and that can result in big problems on site. If you can show customers what a large area of stone will look like, an area akin to that they are actually considering, problems can be discussed and overcome.
Very rarely do we experience this problem of a miss-match between samples and actual product, as we have over the years learnt that by covering every little detail with the clients you can pre-empt the pitfalls and deal with them prior to order. It is also vital, in our opinion, that both partners of a couple are involved together in the decision process, otherwise you can have a situation where the one that isn’t there won’t like what the other has chosen.
Whatever people have wanted us to do we have always risen to the challenge. When someone first asked if we could do a swimming pool I said yes and then found out how to do it.
The business has changed over time as the market has evolved. People are much more design savvy than they used to be. They will often now quote the names of designers whose products they like. In the past I don’t think it was that important to them. It has become more so with the change in lifestyle – designer branding of clothing, cars and watches has filtered into the home.
Kitchen work surfaces have also moved on from the obvious and difficult to live with polished black granite, a material that we do try to move people on from. We explain it will show water and finger marks. The client might then ask what alternatives there are and you can have the discussion. We rarely specify the work surface material in isolation as we treat a project as a whole and would always put a room together with a palette of colours in a scheme. Simply putting in black granite doesn’t always give you the desired effect or best mix.
A client at the moment has requested Carrara honed marble for her kitchen worktops. We explained that marble could easily become marked and stained but she said they had lived in an old house in Italy and they understood how the marble would age. Indeed, the aged effect is exactly what she is looking for.
We have used some limestone worktops as well. Again, we warn the client that they will mark, but often the appearance is key and people are not overly worried about the material’s suitability. And it’s not just worktops. We had one client who wanted a polished Nero Absolute floor in her kitchen. We told her it would get scratched but she said it didn’t matter because she wouldn’t be using it that much as she spent most of her time overseas.
Another key element to a good design is to be sympathetic with the property and create something that has longevity, both in terms of the materials and the appearance, because there is always a danger that anything produced to evoke a current trend or fashion will become out dated – thankfully most clients don’t want red basins or cow hide clad baths. Stone has been used for millennia, so it’s difficult to see how, in its purest form, it will become out-of-date. Perhaps some of the modern variations of carved stone basins and baths will look of-there-time in the future.
You could say the green marble we used was a fashion product, but I would argue the point that as it was used in conjunction with simple timber wall panelling, white pottery, chrome brassware, white marble flooring and a soft palette of paint colours that it retains a very classical appearance with that stone. If you had done that room 20 years ago it wouldn’t necessarily be any different. The fittings might date, the taps… but the stone won’t.
Sometimes you go back to a house that you worked on for a different client 10 years earlier. We’re doing one at the moment in North Yorkshire. When the original clients moved out they asked us to design the entire interior of their new house in the Lake District and now the new owners of the original house in North Yorkshire have asked us to redesign that for them.
The largest area of stone we used last time was Crema Marfil and travertine around the swimming pool, steam room and changing areas. We’re not replacing that. It still looks beautiful and completely up-to-date. The most dated element was the distressed painted furniture in the bedroom – and we are replacing all of that.
We have used Silestone engineered quartz. It has consistent colour and pattern to it, great for those who want a minimal appearance but lacking in the substance and variety that you get with natural marble and granite.
Engineered stone tends to be specified more in bathrooms than kitchens as people often want it to complement the white pottery in their bathrooms, creating a clean and simple style. Price for both natural stone and engineered stone is broadly the same so there’s no good reason from a cost stand point to favour the latter. The antibacterial quality of Silestone is rarely mentioned by clients or discussed relative to natural materials. Neither has maintenance ever been an issue with the specification of any stone, although any particular problematic properties of any material will always be highlighted to the client.
The only issues we have ever had to address have been with wood surfaces – water marking, burn marks, that sort of thing. We do offer a maintenance service on previous installations carried out by ourselves or as part of a new project, such as re-polishing floors or repairing damaged tiles. Once again, the usual pitfalls need to be addressed with the client, such as the possible problems of matching stone. This we try to anticipate on our installations and always leave a few extra tiles with the client, advising them to keep them safe just in case one does get broken as a matching tile will then be available.
I must confess we have not considered the environmental or ethical issues of the stones we use. It is an issue with timber, and some suppliers have stopped using particular hardwoods or timber from various places. Many of our suppliers have cut back on the amount of packaging they use, with appliance manufacturers encouraged to re-cycle old machines. Mark Wilkinson have for many years planted a tree for every kitchen they produce, issuing a certificate to that effect for the client. But on the natural stone side of things it’s not something that’s been discussed, although in the current climate it is sure to be a topic for consideration sooner rather than later.
The overall appearance of the particular room is paramount in our clients minds – where, why and when the many products used to achieve the design came from or how it came to be are issues that designers, importers, manufactures and suppliers will need to discuss, advise and then act upon.
With timber it was the companies supplying me with their products who addressed the issue and I imagine it will be the same with stone.