Nero Marquina leads this page
Most of the tiles here are Nero Marquina, quarried in the Basque Country in northern Spain, and the rest are sold under the plain trade name Black. The difference is worth knowing: Marquina is a specific stone with a recognizable vein, and Black is a description.
What makes Marquina identifiable is the contrast. The ground runs close to true black and the veins are white, narrow and sharply edged, arriving in a few decisive lines instead of a network. No other marble in this catalog does that.
The vein scale decides the size
This is the calculation most people miss on a strongly veined stone. The veins on a black marble are widely spaced, so a small piece can arrive with a single line across a corner or with nothing at all, while a large one shows the full pattern.
Sizes here go from 4x4 up to 24x24, and the same stone is two products at those two ends. At 18x18 and 24x24 a tile is close to a composition on its own. At 4x4 and 3x6 the pattern belongs to the run, not the piece, and the variation between pieces is what you get instead.
Why the honed group is so large
Polished leads here by a small margin, with honed almost level and a tumbled group behind it. That share of honed is high for marble, and it comes from what a dark surface does with reflected light.
A polished black is a mirror, so it reports everything that happens to it: dust, a footmark, and any change in the surface itself. A honed black reports far less of that while keeping the vein contrast, which is the whole reason it is specified as often as it is. How a given marble reacts underneath the finish is a separate question, and the marble tile page sets out where the calcite and the dolomitic stones differ.
The tumbled small formats
A tumbled group comes in 4x4, 3x6 and 6x6, which is a different product from the field tile even though it is the same stone. Tumbling rounds the edges and takes the face to a soft matte, so the pieces read as older and go together with a wider joint.
Those are border and band pieces before they are floor pieces. A tumbled black at 4x4 goes into a run of pale tile as a line, and that is the job it was cut for.
Black marble is usually the second material
Very little of this stone goes down as a whole floor, and cost is not what stops it. A room floored entirely in black marble loses its edges, since the eye has nothing to measure the space against, which is why the historical use has always been as a contrast piece.
A border, a band, a shower niche, a fireplace surround, a checkerboard square. The black and white tile page covers the checkerboard arrangement and what has to match between the two colors.
Thickness
This range is 3/8 inch almost throughout with a 1/2 inch group in it. On a page where the stone is going to be set next to something else, that is the figure to read first.
A black border in a pale field only works if the two arrive at the same depth, and two marbles chosen on color alone frequently do not. The thickness is published against each piece.
Where black marble goes
A bathroom takes it more readily than any other room, because the surfaces are small and a dark stone at close range reads as depth instead of as weight. A hallway, an entry and a fireplace follow.
For a dark stone with no vein in it, granite tile is the other answer and a different look entirely. For black at slab scale, black slabs covers the counter and island side.
