Calacatta, Carrara or Statuario: how to tell the white marbles apart

Where do the white marbles come from?

The famous white marbles are quarried in the Apuan Alps in Tuscany, around the town of Carrara. Same mountains, different quarries, different looks. Names are trade names, so the same stone can travel under a couple of them.

Source: Brachot: Bianco Carrara

The white marbles side by side

Here is how they differ, according to the stone processors who sell them.

Source: Dedalo Stone: Statuario marble

What a museum means by Statuario

The Corsi collection at Oxford's museum of natural history, a set of decorative stones assembled in Rome in the 1820s, keeps a Statuario sample and describes the term as the one used for the finest white statuary marble from Carrara, Seravezza and the other Apuan quarries that supply white marble. Geologically it is a fine grained calcite marble. The entry adds a detail that tells you how pure the best blocks are: Statuario looks so like the Pentelic marble of ancient Athens that telling the two apart needs isotope and trace element analysis.

That purity is the point of the name. Statuario was the sculptor's grade, chosen for an even white with few veins, and the blocks that reached it were always the minority. It is why the stone processors describe it as limited, and why a slab with bold grey veins is more likely a Calacatta or a veined Carrara than a true Statuario, whatever the sticker says.

Source: Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Corsi Collection: Statuario

Which white marble is best for a kitchen?

None of them shrugs off acid. They are all calcite marble, so lemon and vinegar etch them. Carrara is the quietest: its soft grey pattern hides marks better than the bright white of Statuario. One processor notes that Statuario is used more often in living rooms and bathrooms than in kitchens for exactly this reason.

The bold Calacattas shine where they are seen and not scrubbed: an island end, a splashback, a vanity, a feature wall. If you want the look on the worktop you cook on, read is marble a good kitchen worktop first.

Source: Dedalo Stone: Statuario marble

What is bookmatching?

Two slabs cut one after the other from the same block are opened like the pages of a book, so the veins mirror each other across the joint. On a Calacatta splashback or an island waterfall end it is spectacular. It needs consecutive slabs, so ask for them when you choose at the yard, and plan the joint where the mirror will be seen.

Seeing them in person

Pictures flatten marble. Each of these stones has its own record in our stone library, with its finishes and slab thickness, and you choose the actual slab at the yard. When it goes into your kitchen, the worktop is measured for cutting once the cabinets are in.