More often than not, people get in touch with us not because they want a sink or a counter top, a fireplace or a shower surround, rather, they’ve pretty much already settled on the idea that they want soapstone. Then, form and function follow.

You know the feeling when you’ve pulled together the vision for your kitchen, bathroom, living room…or whatever room is occupying your thoughts. You see it. You know it. All that’s left is to act on it.

In our experience, people tend to view soapstone as one of the key pieces they need to complete the design puzzle of a room. The specific form the stone takes is almost secondary. You see, sinks and counter tops are practical purchases. You need things like these to live. But with soapstone, emotions seem to carry the weight.

Soapstone is created by nature, composed of talc, quartz and various minerals that has compressed over millions of years. There are two types of soapstone, artistic and architectural. Artistic soapstone is softer with higher talc content, suitable for carving. Architectural is harder and denser, making it suitable for the counter tops, sinks, etc. that we fabricate.

The soapstone is light grey in its natural state with moderate to heavy amounts of veining, varying from piece to piece. With age, use and the application of mineral oil the stone darkens and the character and beauty become more apparent.

We spend a great deal of time working with sources of soapstone, meeting with suppliers and traveling to the quarries to assess the quality and longevity of the deposit. Soapstone tends to be found in small out-croppings that may produce as few as 2-3 truck loads of slabs and even in larger deposits we might identify 3-4 distinct ston variations across a 50 meter face. As always our only goal is a quality stone for your project and sometimes we must reject stone, and affect delivery schedules.

Recently a number of sources have been marketing a "harder" soapstone which is not soapstone at all, but serpentine, which has in the past been discarded or sold as low quality marble. It does not have the same characteristics as soapstone and we do not work with or recommend it.

We consider soapstone one attractive, tough, durable performer around the home - that actually improves with age. Sudennly being "everyone" quickly loses its luster.