Welcome to Granitetopia Encyclopedia!

Continuing our efforts to educate our customers, we built this knowledge database so that you can gain a better understanding of glossary related to natural stone products that we offer. Materials comes from the Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia. We hope you find this tool useful in your research.

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Kinds of marbleEncyclopedia Index

Some historically important kinds of marble, named after the locations of their quarries, include:

• Parian from Greece
• Penteli from Greece
• Carrara from Italy
• Proconnesus from Turkey
• Macael from Spain
• Makrana from India
• Danby from Vermont
• Yule from Colorado

White marbles, like Carrara, have been prized for sculpture since classical times. This preference has to do with the softness and relative isotropy and homogeneity, and a relative resistance to shattering. Also, the low index of refraction of calcite allows light to penetrate several millimeters into the stone before being scattered out, resulting in the characteristic "waxy" look which gives "life" to marble sculptures of the human body.