What a split face shows that a sawn one hides
A limestone is compacted sea sediment, laid down in beds, with shell fragments and other remains through it. A saw cuts straight across all of that and polishes the evidence flat.
Splitting follows the bedding instead, so the face that appears is a bedding plane: the surface the material actually settled on. It is irregular, it catches light unevenly, and it shows the structure of the rock rather than a section through it.
Random thickness is the consequence
One listing here gives the thickness as random, and that is accurate rather than missing data.
A split piece is as thick as the break made it. Where a sawn tile is 3/8 of an inch throughout, a rock face sheet varies across its own surface, which is where the shadow comes from. It also means the sheet stands proud of anything flat next to it, and that is the figure to settle before it meets another material.
The stone itself
Paris limestone is the pale cream stone of the Ile-de-France, fine grained and almost without veining, and it is the material most of central Paris is built from.
That absence of pattern is why it works split. A stone with strong veining broken along an irregular line produces two competing kinds of irregularity; a plain one lets the break be the only thing happening. Limestone tile holds every limestone we carry.
Sheets, not tiles
Everything here is supplied as a mosaic sheet at 12x12, 12x14 and 12 5/8x12 5/8 rather than as field tile.
A split face has to be small to be practical. A large piece with an irregular back will not sit down on a wall, where a sheet of small split pieces takes up its own unevenness within the mesh. Limestone mosaics gathers the sheets cut from the other limestones.
Where a rock face limestone belongs
A wall, and only a wall. The relief that makes the material work is exactly what makes it wrong underfoot, and the same applies to a counter or a shower floor.
A fireplace breast, a feature wall, a chimney, an alcove and an exterior elevation are where it goes, and the lighting matters more than the stone does: lit flat the shadows disappear and the wall reads as pale stone with nothing happening in it.
Green in a Paris limestone
One piece in this range is classed green rather than white, which is unusual enough to be worth explaining.
Green in a limestone comes from clay minerals that were on the sea floor when the sediment settled, chiefly glauconite and chlorite. It is muted and slightly gray rather than saturated, and where it appears in a stone that is otherwise cream it reads as a tint in the bed rather than as a separate material.
The honed piece in the range
One piece here is honed rather than split, which is the same stone brought to a flat even matte surface.
It is worth knowing the two exist side by side, because a honed Paris limestone and a rock face one look like different materials and are not. Where a wall needs the stone but not the shadow, the honed version is the same quarry answering a quieter brief.
