Whitby, North Yorkshire: jet, fossilised wood found in such density nowhere else, has been carved into ornaments since Roman times, but it was Victoria's forty years of mourning black, after 1861, that built an entire industry around it. The court permitted no other black; jet's deep matte absorbed light rather than answering it. Whitby Jet borrows that absolute: black that asks nothing of the room, because the room already knows. The shade of certainty worn without comment.