Meet A. Patel Countertop production comes at a catastrophic cost. In 1963, in a small village about an hour northwest of Venice, an Italian inventor named Marcello Toncelli began experimenting with something unusual. He wanted to take crushed quartz, one of the most abundant minerals on earth, bind it with resin, and compress it into slabs that were harder, more uniform, and more beautiful than anything nature could produce on its own. By 1975, he had patented the process. He