White collection

It takes skill, passion and dedication to extract an object from a block of stone. 150 years of family history devoted to the shaping of marble, near Verona in Italy, led us to the extraordinary adventure of Marsotto edizioni. And when the adventure becomes an even bolder enterprise, one needs to choose very carefully the people you will be travelling with.

Under the expert art direction of James Irvine, with an outstanding team of designers and the capabilities of our craftsmen, we have been able to realise our dream: to make everyday objects exclusively from Carrara marble. Exclusively Italian white stone. Timeless objects, to be passed down from generation to generation.

And the adventure continues with the new 2012 collection. Of tables. Large, handsome.
The table as a social hub has always been part of Marsotto’s history. For decades our artisans, guardians of tradition at the old stone mill, created the precious inlays that gave their unique character to many of the tables still used in family homes today.

And now, in a different contemporary mood, we have reintroduced that object around which are performed so many daily gestures of relationships, sharing and affection.

Costanza Olfi and Mario Marsotto

At table with design

Creating design is about giving form. The form given, however, has to be pertinent, not arbitrary.
Pertinence is a neglected word, to be revalued. Marsotto edizioni has been pertinent since its first collection. Now into its third year of activity, it has sharpened the definition of its vocation for pertinence. To present only convivial tables, of varying shapes and sizes, means both returning to the origins of Mediterranean
living, and emphasizing the relations to which the table is an invitation.

Around the table our daily lives take their course. Meals are eaten at it, people talk and argue, make peace, look into each other’s eyes and touch each other’s hands. Around the table people read and work; children draw and grown-ups do their arithmetic on it. Getting tables designed is like suggesting a return to the roots of our discipline, design being first and foremost a craft concerned with relationships: between creator and maker, user and product.

To use only white, hand-finished Carrara marble means to exalt the richness of Italy’s land, and also to bestow a rituality on everyday domestic life. Opting for the slab, so as not to spoil the purity of marble, or to choose primary geometries reminiscent of a classicality, shows a respect for the epic nature of this material. An ethical relationship with marble is implied. And the remarkable value of this collection lies in the ethicality of that alliance.
Each designer here, in the form and structure of their table, has admirably represented a devotion, as it were, to white Carrara marble. Konstantin Grcic has used it in the slab so as not to violate it. David Chipperfield has retraced it to its classical origins, by designing an infinitely modular table similar to a colonnade. Naoto Fukasawa has accentuated the cylindrical volume of his table legs, in order to add sturdiness to these primary geometries. James I