Material Basics
Why Travertine Has Holes, and What Filling Actually Does
The voids are not defects and not a manufacturing choice. They are how the stone formed, they decide how it moves, and they are the reason filled and unfilled travertine are effectively two different materials.
Questions this article answers
Which country does my travertine come from?
We buy from seven: Turkey, Iran, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Pakistan and China, and they are not variants of one product. Turkish and Iranian material is strongly bedded and openly porous, which is what takes the classic vein-cut face. Italian and Spanish material is pale and fine-pored enough to take a high polish. Pakistani material is widely traded under this name and is mostly reef limestone, a different rock entirely. Chinese material covers several provinces that differ from each other as much as the countries do. They saw at different rates and take different fillers, so a quote that names no origin cannot be compared with another quote. We state the origin before we state a price, and we cut and finish all of it at our own base.
How is your travertine graded?
On what actually varies in the material rather than on a colour name. The grading question for travertine is how open the voids are, how deep they run, how regular they are, and whether the tone holds across the lot -- plus, where it matters, which producing region it came from and whether it is filled. A colour name carries none of that information, which is why two lots sold under the same name can arrive as visibly different stone.
Filed under Material Basics
