A Natural Beauty

The marble veins and the shining stone

The uniqueness of marble veins

In the word marble resonates the echo of the Greek word marmaròs, the ‘shining stone’. It was so called because of the very pure white marble, so deeply loved by all the great Greek artists, over the centuries. But each architect and decorator knows that he does not choose marble only for its purity and for the excellence of the material. What really matters, above all, are the colour and the veins: the ones who determine the uniqueness, the elegance and liveliness of marble.

Metamorphosis

Marble is one of the most striking examples of how Nature is able to transform and modify the Material itself. From a geological point of view, marble is a crystalline and granular limestone rock of metamorphic origin. Metamorphosis means transformation, it means changing shape and appearance. This is what happened with marble when, under the pressure of strong telluric movements and heat, “poor” minerals (shells and skeletons of tiny organisms mixed with sand limestone) have metamorphically transformed into colourful rocks.

Mars, Moon or simply Dream?

Every single slab of marble is unique, in terms of colour and shine. But above all the veins make each slab inimitable: beautiful arabesques, Lunar landscapes, Martian horizons, but also fantastic arboreal and floral creatures are “painted” in the rock. The most amazing thing is that no one knows what will be visible inside a block of marble. It is possible to deduce colours and trends of the veins, knowing the origin of the block, but each one of us will see, in every vein of every single marble slab, the images of his own imagination and of his own dream world.

From impurities the beauty of colours

The so-called “impurities”, as clay, iron oxides, and silt, are responsible for the colour of the marble. The countless chromatic variations of the veins depend on the minerals that have been “trapped” inside the rock, in the dramatic process of transformation: hematite for the veins ranging from purple to pink to brick red, chlorite for the countless shades of green; pyrite, for the incredible gray scale. In Nature – as it often happens – Beauty blooms from what is small and poor: this time it has given us the veins of marble, wonderful all-natural textures.