Wednesday 26th October, 2016

Beautiful stone, gorgeous views, lovely food and delicious wine. A three day trip to Trento, Italy earlier this month with Hardscape to see a porphyry quarry was a fantastic opportunity to learn about this stunning stone.

Porphyry is an igneous rock formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. The word porphyry is from Ancient Greek and means ‘purple’; localized metal ore deposits give the stone some of its many vivid rich colours. As well as being vibrant and warm in colour, it is extremely robust and is often used as setts in fan patterns and sawn for something more contemporary.

We saw porphyry in the quarry, the plant, and in a number of inspiring landscape schemes as we travelled up into the Alps. This is the only place to get true porphyry (if you get offered it from China it’s not the real thing!)

Sometimes I really really love my job.