How an inlay is made
The figure is cut from one marble and the ground from another, each piece shaped so the two fit together with no gap, and the assembly is bonded onto a backing and finished flat.
It is the same technique as a waterjet mosaic taken to a larger scale and a lower piece count: instead of hundreds of chips on mesh, a handful of precisely cut sections making one panel. The tradition behind it runs back through Italian intarsia and Roman opus sectile.
Half an inch, throughout
Every piece in this range is 1/2 inch thick, which is heavier than the 3/8 inch marble field tile normally runs at.
The depth is there because the piece is an assembly. A thinner panel gives the joints between the inlaid sections less material to hold on to, and a half inch back also keeps the panel flat while several stones with slightly different hardnesses are ground together.
Polished, without exception
Every piece here is polished, and on an inlay that is close to a requirement rather than a preference.
An inlay works by contrast between two stones, and a polish raises contrast: it deepens the darker marble, brightens the lighter one and makes the line between them read sharply. Honed, the same panel loses much of the separation the design depends on.
The trim comes with it
Alongside the panels sit moldings, baseboards and narrow 3/4x24 and 6x24 pieces.
That matters more here than on a plain tile. A composed panel has to stop somewhere, and an inlaid border finished with an ordinary bullnose from another range gives the whole thing away. Having the border, the base and the field from one workshop is most of what this collection is offering. Marble moldings carries the plain trim.
The stones doing the contrast
The color list runs beige, white, gray, multicolor and a brown, and the series names are marble names: Venere, Supremo, Macchiato, Gris, Oscuro.
Those are pairings rather than single stones. An inlay needs two marbles that differ enough to read apart at a distance and agree enough not to look accidental, and the workshop has already made that choice. It is the part of the design hardest to get right by assembling separate tiles yourself.
Sizes are panels rather than tiles
12x24 and 24x24 carry the field, with the narrow strips as borders.
A 24x24 inlaid panel is a complete figure rather than a quarter of one, which is the opposite of how a cement pattern tile works. Laying them is a matter of placing finished compositions side by side rather than building a pattern up out of fractions.
Where an inlaid panel goes
An entry floor, a hall, the center of a room, a border around a plain field, a fireplace surround and a wall panel.
It is used where one surface is meant to be the event in a room, which is why the pieces are large and the collection is small. Stone pattern sets is the multi-size alternative and marble tile the plain stone.
