In yesterday's post we looked at inspiring geometries in prints, so let's continue the thread by looking at intriguing shapes in marble patterns.
"Marble Patterns" is actually the name of an experimental laboratory by Pordenone-based marble company Del Savio with the art direction of the Zanellato/Bortotto studio.
Giorgia Zanellato and Daniele Bortotto founded their practice in Treviso in 2013 and for this project they launched a collaboration with two other studios – Dutch textile designer Mae Engelgeer and Lebanese interior and art design studio David/Nicolas.
Each designer created three collections for a total of nine patterns, all made with ten different types of Italian marbles.
Marble manufacturing is deeply rooted in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region and the natural stones employed for this collection – from the Grigio Carnico and the Fior di Pesco Carnico – are produced and worked in Pordenone, in the headquarter of the Del Savio company.
All studios worked with three main purposes in mind – transforming the classical art of Palladian flooring, creating visually striking pieces based on geometrical motifs and designing versatile patterns.
Their versatility is a clear from the fact that, the more you look at the graphic motifs, the more you get the impression they would look beautiful on both garments and accessories; besides, jewels with marble elements with these patterns would look simply stunning.
In these patterns marble is transformed into unique surfaces that can be used for floor coverings or work surfaces, or can become special elements like coffee tables, or employed to embellish rooms, especially when combined with many types of cement to make an even wider range of patterns.
The multiple sophisticated textures and palettes are indeed the result of a highly artisanal process that combines Italian marbles and special coloured cements, which allows infinite variations to customise environments (the slabs of the collection can be customised in different ways to obtain personalised products).
The emphasis on customisation and versatility comes from the background of the studios involved in the project: Mae Engelgeer is indeed a textile designer and studied fashion at the Amsterdam Fashion institute and at the Sandberg Institute.
Passionate about craftsmanship and hoping to innovate and reinterpret in a modern key traditional techniques, Engelgeer works on a wide range of projects, from interior design to large-scale installations and public art.
She has a talent for creating complex compositions with soft colour palettes and linear motifs that have vibrant tactile and dimensional qualities. "Myth", "Vision" and "Icon", the patterns Engelgeer developed for Del Savio (images 3, 4 and 5 in this post) feature graceful drawings that form subtle optical illusions. The pieces can be used separately or mixed together to form an intriguing composition.
Zanellato/Bortotto's patterns (images 6, 7 and 8 in this post) reinterpret the Palladian tradition from a contemporary perspective by juxtaposing various, irregular pieces of marble or other natural stones.
Marble swirls and veins are also mixed with various patterns of coloured cement to design unique motifs. In one pattern there is an optical twist as lines are discontinuous and keep chasing one another without never meeting.
There is an even greater emphasis on optical motifs in David Raffoul and Nicolas Moussallem's "Standard Geometries" patterns (images 9, 10, 11 and 12 in this post) some of them have indeed got a Vasarely quality about them. The interior design duo attempted a dialogue between a basic geometrical figure – a square, a triangle and a diagonal line – and the space surrounding it.
Geometrical figures are repeated in parallel, perpendicular or oblique sequences, to create one single, unified unit by combining modules made of different materials, such as marble or concrete resin. The empty interstices of marble, conventionally seen as mere residual spaces to fill up, define the visual structure of this product, as well as the vibrant composition of its surface.
Del Savio's "Marble Patterns" were developed following an interdisciplinary approach: looking at the graphic designs developed by these three studios you get the impression you may be seeing patterns for fabrics rather than for marble slabs, so let's hope that in future we will see Del Savio working with a fashion house to develop a limited collection of garments and accessories with matching interior design pieces in the finest marbles.
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