White marble with soft grey veins from the celebrated quarries outside Carrara in Tuscany. These stone deposits in the Apuan Alps were first exploited at any scale by the Romans. In the 16th century, Michelangelo came to choose stone for his sculpture, staying to specify exactly which chunks he wanted, having them cut to size and apparently overseeing reconstruction of some of the access roads so that delivery could be safely achieved. You are in good company. It is available in either small tesserae measuring approximately 2x1x1cm, or rods (listelli in italian) measuring very approximately 2x1x20cm - but the rods are very brittle so you may be sent shorter pieces. 500g of the small tesserae gives you around 100 bits, which should cover an area very approximately 15cm². 500g of the listelli gets you rods with a linear length of somewhere between 90 and 105cm, depending on the density of the stone. Remember to choose adhesive and grout that are designed for moisture-sensitive stone.

Tesserae come with 4 smooth machine-cut faces and 2 riven faces. Listelli or rods are machine-cut on all four sides. Please bear in mind that listelli are very fragile and, however well packed, are liable to crack or break in the post. This doesn’t affect their usefulness as you will be cutting them anyway. If you want to use your listelli as entire pieces and it’s imperative that they arrive whole, please contact me. Some types of stone are less brittle than others and will survive travel better, so I may be able to give you further advice. On a few of our larger pieces of stone you'll notice marks on one face where the stone has at some point been stuck onto a mesh backing.  This is difficult to remove and you will need to work so that it is left out of sight. The mesh is applied in the quarry or at the processing plant and it is put there both to keep brittle stone in one piece and to prevent injuries being caused by bits broken during the cutting process.