Why is the large island part marble and part butcher block?
It’s about one-third marble. One reason is to roll pastry. The other is because I wanted that very pretty hammered nickel sink there for washing hands or doing flowers. I’ve noticed over the years that if you have a sink set in wood it gets funky around the edges, and I hate that. The really large island is because my daughters cook with me when they visit, and my husband is America’s best prep cook. Where did you find the beautiful terra-cotta floor tiles? It’s a new house, and I wanted lots of old surfaces old floorboards, old doors, old tiles to counteract the new car smell. We know this great antiques dealer in West Cornwall, Michael Trapp, who goes to France and brings back balustrades, tiles, and broken pieces of stone. I told Michael I wanted old terra-cotta floor tiles but not with strong color, and he came back with exactly the right samples gorgeous 200-year-old tiles ranging from soft pink to gray. What else fell into place as magically as the tiles? Oh, so many things! The
