Maple was always the original choice for butchers. Incredibly hardwearing, easy to maintain and a good contrasting colour to prepare meat on, little has changed. Except perhaps that maple is now seen for the beautifully subtle timber it is. With grain sometimes looking like crushed silk, we use it to great effect in kitchens where light can be an issue, or we want to balance out the colours of the units and walls. Harder even than White Oak, Glacial Maple is very pale, and once oiled reflects light wonderfully.

Maple is a wood of phenomenal hardness and exotic beauty. The grain varies like waves breaking on rocks, which creates some of the finest and most elegant figuring seen in wood. It is crucial for Maple - in this case Black Maple - to come from areas where there are incredibly hard winters. Our Maple is from the very northern States in America, for example Vermont (the home of Maple syrup), New Hampshire and Maine, or from Southern Canada. The sort of places where you would expect to have snow on the ground for five months straight.

Black Maple is around thirty percent harder than Oak. Which is a pretty good starting point for a kitchen worktop then. Like our Cherry, which is chosen specifically for its colour, the same is true of Maple worktops. We have tried hard to create a Maple worktop which is not too 'white' and not too brown either. The results are spectacular.