A look back at the Marmomacc natural stone fair in Verona

Piba Marmi is located very close to Verona and specialises in bathrooms made of high quality natural stone. For its latest "Saturnia" collection, which consists of limestone, marble and Pietra Serena, the grey sandstone which is Italian in origin, Piba Marmi worked in cooperation with the designer Philippe Nigro. With the Japanese designer Hikaru Mori the company produced the collection "Stone likes Water", which contains both organically shaped and geometrical washbasins, bathtubs and shower trays, together with benches. Hikaru Mori selected the natural stone types of travertine, limestone and marble for his designs.

In Patricia Urquiola as the designer Budri manage to acquire a strong collaborator, who brought new life to the company's products with her a modern design idiom and made full use of its modern production facilities. After the sons of the founder took over Budri its entire operations were reorganised, with major investment in modern production machinery such as, for example, a cutting machine operating with ultra-high water pressure.

Urquiola's design for "Macrosteria" seems to be a bionic quotation, a microscopy of the composition of the stone in the form of a million-fold enlargement of the hexagonal honeycomb shape of the molecules.

The stand occupied by the firm of Marsotto, which is also located in the Verona region, was entirely faced with thin slabs of marble. In the interior of the 'marble house' this created an impressive effect because the slabs are translucent and as it penetrates them the light brings out the beautiful veins of the marble. Marsotto specialises in exclusive natural stone fittings for hotels, cruise ships, shops and private residences.

Equally impressive were the surfaces created by Lithos Design. The designer Raffaello Galiotto studied art before he began working for the furniture industry and specialised in plastic outdoor furniture. He has been able to transfer the know-how he collected there about creating three-dimensional forms to a different material – natural stone. Lithos has received a number of awards for his highly plastic and sculptural designs.

The firm of Franchiumbertomarmi summed up the credo of the marble industry with its slogan "Thinking on a big scale". From marble quarries the company produces impressively sized blocks in the varieties gioia moschettato, goia miele and bianco ordinazio and specialises in turning them in to large-scale objects. In addition Franchiumbertomarmi also offer high-quality natural stone from other locations.

The firm of Antolini Luigi obviously wanted to make sure that those who had seen too much hard rock didn't turn to stone themselves and provided an impressive spectacle at its stand, with two angelic 'veline', as the glamorous Italian TV-show girls are named, made sure that visitors were kept in the right mood. Sex sells.