What gauged means
Gauged is the largest finish group here and it is a word that turns up almost nowhere else.
A split slate has a natural face and an uneven back, so the back gets ground flat to a consistent depth while the front is left alone. That is gauging: the piece is made dimensionally usable without anything being done to the surface anybody will see.
The colors are minerals, not choices
Black leads here, with grays, a green and a multicolor behind them, in series named Montauk, California, Ember, Midnight and Gold.
Slate takes its color from what was in the original mud: carbon for the blacks and grays, chlorite for the greens, iron for the rusts and golds. A multicolor slate is a bed where several of those were present at once, and the variation within a single sheet is the record of that.
Why slate suits a mosaic
A split face is irregular by nature, and irregularity reads as intentional at small scale and as a fault at large scale.
On a large floor tile sold elsewhere an uneven split face is a surface people notice underfoot. On a mosaic sheet the same unevenness becomes texture, and the many small pieces average out into a field rather than a set of individual problems.
The formats split in two
12x12 leads, with a 6x22 strip, a 4x12 and a 3x6 behind it.
The square sheets are ordinary mosaic; the strips are the stacked, ledger-like products where the pieces are elongated and laid in courses. Those two look related and they are used in different places, since the strips are wall material and the sheets are not necessarily.
Thickness varies because the face does
The figures here run 3/8, 0.31, 0.50 and 0.24 of an inch across only a handful of products.
That spread is the split face showing up in the specification. A gauged piece has a flat back and a variable front, so the stated thickness is an average rather than a constant. It matters where a slate sheet meets a flat material, since the two will not sit level on their own.
Slate and the printed version of it
Slate look is one of the larger printed effects in this catalog, and comparing the two tells you what a print can and cannot reach.
A good slate look reproduces the color, the tonal drift and even a pressed relief that suggests a cleft face. What it cannot reproduce is that every real piece is a different thickness and a different surface, because the rock split where it wanted to. A printed range is made from a set number of faces; a split slate has as many faces as there are pieces.
Where slate mosaic goes
A backsplash, a fireplace breast, a feature wall, a band inside a plain field and a shower floor where the texture is wanted underfoot.
Stone mosaic tile gathers the sheets from every quarried stone, and slate look tile the printed version of the same face.
