Nature gives us many precious, inimitable products but, at the same time, She often makes life hard getting at them: take the pearls, hidden in oysters, in the depths of the sea, or the diamonds and gold buried in the bowels of the earth.

Granite: a rock so hard it takes a diamond to cut it, can outcrop in impervious desert regions of India, Africa and Brazil where heat, wind and sand make working conditions far from pleasant, where the only roads - if they do exist - are dirt tracks and where water and electricity have to be brought in: alternatively, it can be found in the mountains of Scandinavia where temperatures are well below freezing point for many months of the year. In both cases the specific weight of the product makes transport costs a decisive factor to opening up a new quarry.

Certainly modern technology has done much to ease Man's task and, with the introduction of the diamond wire-saw in the 1960s, a revolution in cutting occured which, with improvements and the perfection of other techiques (jet flame and rock drills) has meant that granites are now more widely available and in greater quantities than ever before.

The search for new types of granite has been intensified to meet market demands for vast quantities of sound stone for use in big jobs of architecture where, indubitably, the Post Modern style, which its emphasis on colour, has done much to consolidate the image of natural stone as one of prestige and distinction. In the thirty years of its activity, R.E.D. GRANITI can claim to have contributed considerably towards increasing the popularity of natural stones throughout the world.

What is more, the R.E.D. guarantee of quality, precision and reliability has helped to erase many doubts, on the part of architects and their clients, as to the suitability of using a natural, rather than man-made product in their works. The result testify not only to the incomparable beauty of natural stone, to the proficiency of those who processed it and the creativity of those who designed its application, but, first and foremost, who skillfully extricated it from its original, often hostile environment.