American Designer Stephen Burks on Fashioning Marble
Stephen Burks’ first brush with marble was on the top of a mountain in the Tuscan town of Carrara while watching a monolithic-sized chunk being removed from the earth.
The well-known U.S.-based industrial designer and his son were awestruck. “With every block of marble the mountain is being diminished. Shouldn’t we think more consciously about how it’s applied?” said the Chicago native, who was the first African American to win the prestigious Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in product design in 2015.
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Third-generation Salvatori heir and the Italy-based company’s chief executive officer Gabriele Salvatori contacted the educator and designer during the pandemic. Even though they never spent time together, they produced their first collaboration in 2021, called “Neighbors and Friends.” Fast forward to 2023, and their second collection represents the evolution of their professional relationship and Burks’ relationship with marble itself. Precioso is a collection of frames, vases and small mementos meant to stand the test of time and made from production offcuts — a collection that defies the idea of marble as monumental and instead stirs the idea of it as a personal treasure.
“We’ve tried to make products around the idea of ‘upcycling’ what is generally considered marble waste. We asked ourselves: can we compose something beautiful from these leftovers?” Burks said.
Like the previous collaboration, the objects in the new Precioso collection are crafted from a vivid palette of richly colored natural stones, including Verde Guatemala green, Giallo Siena yellow and Rosso Francia red, juxtaposed with the classic Bianco Carrara and Nero Marquinia and sourced from production offcuts. With a respect for the material of stone, the brand has long championed innovation when it comes to sustainable design and is committed to promoting processes and products that keeps waste to a minimum.
“The name Precioso comes from thinking about the people and things that we hold dear to our hearts, the idea of caring and cherishing our loved ones” explained Burks. “It’s also about savoring time. The world we live in today moves so quickly we don’t have time to grasp the true wonder of the nature surrounding us. And, of course, stone is part of that. It’s the foundation of the Earth itself, and therefore absolutely precious. The photo frame is where we keep images of our loved ones, while the vase represents our love of nature.”
Sustainability is very much top of mind for Gabriele Salvatori. Under his tenure, he spearheaded the creation of Lithoverde, which gives a second life to small bits and pieces of natural stone that would otherwise be discarded. The company said it is the first stone texture to be truly described as recycled — 99 percent of it is made up of offcuts of stone, with the remaining 1 percent consisting of a natural soy-based resin used as a binding agent.
The Precioso vase is made up of four rectangles of differing heights, combined to form an elegant play on geometry, with a glass cylinder placed inside. The frame, which can be used in portrait or landscape format, is a patchwork of long slim rectangles in different stones.
“It has been a pleasure to work with Stephen Burks again, a designer with whom we share many common values, especially as it pertains to sustainability,” said Salvatori. “Together, we’ve sought to restore dignity to every single fragment of raw material. While stone is an exceptionally long-lasting material, potentially eternal, it is also finite, so we work to create designs that are as timeless as the material, that can accompany us throughout our life and be handed down to future generations.”
Burks, who also lived in Milan for a time, collaborated with the Italian furniture company Cappellini in 2000 and went on to forge high-profile projects with fashion firms like Missoni, for which he made everything from dolls to candlesticks and chairs covered in its signature knit fabric.
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