Carving Stone from the Italian Mountains

We work with an independent stonemason in Carrara, Italy , to shape the bowls for our terra collection.

The workshop is located at the foot of the marble mountains, in this region where all great artist travelled (da Vinci was a frequent visitor) to source the finest Italian marbles and enjoy the Tuscan lifestyle.

Pia Wüstenberg visiting a marble quarry in Carrara

The mountains are vast but the human imprint is already visible, where the quarries have broken into the mountain large areas of exposed stone walls are visible. It used to be more common to mine from the surface of the mountain, but today most mining for marble happens within the mountain. The processes are expensive and sometimes dangerous, and it is hard to predict what one will find under the mountains surface.

Here you can see both the mining on the surface as well as the opening to go within the mountain

Carrara is a region right by the sea with the mountains only kilometers from the shore. The mountains were formed from calcite rich shells compressed over time to form the mountains. Other materials and minerals mixed with these ocean beings and transformed along the calcite / limestone base and thus marble comes in different colours and variations.

Marble Blocks in the Carrara valley

The finest Carrara marble is deemed to be the white Statuario marble, as it is even and perfect to make human sculptures. It even has that warm glow, like human skin.

We work with various types of Carrara Marble, but I will describe the three most common ones:

Nuvolato (Cloud Marble, very soft with light veins)

Calacatta (Peacock marble also, it has strong black blue veins)

Black (Deep black in colour with fine white veins)