BH | Studio Hambledon 86-Inch Marble-Top Dining Table

A stone-topped table is one of the grandest things a dining room can hold. Marble slabs on wooden bases graced eighteenth-century dining rooms and sideboards, and green marble has been prized since Roman times, when it was quarried in Greece and carried by sea to Rome.

The largest, it is a long, generous slab of bottle green marble with fine pale veins, borne on two wide chestnut-toned hardwood panels. The panel wood is kiln-dried for stability, and each panel is parted down its centre by a narrow channel. Every edge is gently rounded, metal plates fix the stone to the base, and adjustable padded feet sit beneath to keep the long top level on any floor. It seats eight to ten, the natural stone makes every top individual, and it goes together without fuss.

This is a table for a big dining room or a converted barn, where a long holiday meal runs into the evening, with platters passed hand to hand and a row of candles burning down the middle. On ordinary days it takes a family supper at one end and a jigsaw at the other. Pair it with a long bench or eight upholstered chairs, hang two pendants over it rather than one, and let a plain linen runner and pewter jugs show off the green.