Travertine Bathroom Vanity Top

Here the basin is not a fabricated bowl but a vessel carved from solid travertine block. Carving from solid takes longer and consumes more material than assembling slabs; in return it gives a single-piece form with no joint anywhere. The outer face of the vessel was left lightly stepped, the inner face falling towards the waste.

Travertine is a porous stone, and in this bathroom some of the pores were deliberately left open: the texture of the surface itself shows. The price of the unfilled preparation is maintenance — open pores collect dirt over time. We therefore saturate the surface with an impregnator, and for the inside of the vessel we recommend the filled preparation: on a surface in constant contact with water, closed pores make cleaning easier and delay staining.

Horizontal bedding lines read on the side face of the plinth; this is the result of cutting perpendicular to the bedding (vein cut). The direction of cut changes travertine's appearance completely: a cut parallel to the bedding would have turned the same stone into a clouded, diffuse surface.