It’s hard to imagine a kitchen without some kind of boos wood countertop. While most kitchens have one or two, others are complete without them. The first natural surfaces used by human beings for meal service and food preparation were primarily made of stone, but once humans moved into walled houses and the home replaced the fireplace with the kitchen as the center of the household’s world, wood became the preferred surface for cooking and food preparation. A wooden dinner table, even in its small form, has been part of many peoples’ homes for generations, providing comfort and ease in eating, while the countertop itself was a central location for cooking and serving food.
Stone is the material of choice for the earliest of these cooktops, since the material was easy to work with. Even the earliest stone surfaces were easy to sand and clean, and early cooks were able to use natural stone for both their countertop and the tools they used for cooking. Stone has a natural resistance to fire, a feature that makes it appealing to cooks since the materials used to burn the stone are not subject to change. Stone is also relatively unaffected by changes in temperature, allowing stone worktops to be used in an almost perpetual manner, no matter what kind of climate you live in. When the stone was used, it was often used on top of wooden boards that were glued or nailed to the countertop, and in order to get the best heat transfer, stone was often exposed directly to fire.
As stone became more common, people began to make the most of their natural stone resources. With the help of skilled artisans, people began carving intricate designs into the stone surface of these surfaces, giving them names such as Boos, or Booby’s, after the cartoon character from the famous Nickelodeon cartoon series “The Rugrats.” Even today, there are many different types of design variations that can be found on wood countertops of all kinds, including decorative patterns carved into them. These decorative patterns, along with the stone they are cut from, are what gives these surfaces their unique appearance, and it’s this unique look that makes it easy to use them in kitchens around the world.
The materials from which stone is cut have always been limited by nature, so even the simplest of stones can be extremely expensive to produce. But in today’s modern world, manufacturers can create extremely expensive surfaces using a wide variety of metals, such as stainless steel, copper, bronze, gold, aluminum and copper. and nickel alloys, and tin alloys.
Some of these metal surfaces have the advantage of being less likely to tarnish than their wood counterparts, while still maintaining the same timeless elegance and sophistication. The only thing these metal surfaces lack in durability is that they do not retain the same fire-resistance ability that the stone used to. There are, however, some metals that are still resistant to heat.
New generation of consumers have begun to notice a shift in how they cook and prepare their meals. These new generation cooks are looking to go beyond traditional stones and metal surfaces and to find a combination of a good-looking countertop that will give their kitchens a more contemporary look, while still providing the same function as the old stone and wood counters of yesterday.