19th c. Marble Kitchen Island

Found outside Toulouse, this 19th-century kitchen island earns its rarity from the thick marble top, the surface every serious cook and baker wanted. Marble stays cold no matter how hot the kitchen gets, which makes it the one place you can roll out pastry and work butter and dough without any of it warming up and sticking, so a marble-topped table was the most coveted surface in a 19th-century kitchen. The wood base below gives it three drawers for the tools of the trade and the height to stand and knead at for hours. Sylvie uses it as a kitchen island, the marble as good for pastry now as it was a century ago.