Robin Grasby reveals Altrock furniture collection made from reclaimed marble
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Robin Grasby has unveiled a collection of tables made from Altrock, a material created by the industrial designer from marble offcuts suspended in resin.
The inaugural furniture collection made from the material was exhibited as part of this year’s London Design Fair and consists of three core elements – a coffee table, a console and dining table.
Grasby designed these base items so that they can be adapted to create a large variety of pieces to demonstrate the flexibly of his material.
“We brought five pieces to LDF to show the scope available using the principals of each design,” Grasby told Dezeen.
“The lean-to table for example can work as a small side table up to a large console or sideboard just through adapting the scale. Everything we make is bespoke, so the idea is that the customer can adapt the design almost limitlessly to suit their needs and restrictions, both functional and spatial.”
The material, a kind of terrazzo made up of 87 per cent recycled stone from luxury marble workshops, was unveiled at the end of last year.
The collection was designed specifically to showcase the possibilities of Altrock’s fabrication method, which can produce a kaleidoscope of colours through the use of different resins and stones.
Through a method called mitring, the slabs can also be assembled into a range of geometric shapes.
“We create angled cuts in the slabs, which can then be rejoined giving the appearance of both a solid mass and a folded, sheet-like surface. This is amplified by the continuation of the marble chunks around the surface as the slabs are cut and ‘folded’ with almost no waste,” said Grasby.
This continuous effect is created using a colour matching technique to adjust the shade of the resin, which is used to bond the slabs, with both the materials’ base colour and the colours of the large marble pieces within in.
“We can create almost seamless joins, which allows the pattern of stones to flow uninterrupted across the faceted surfaces,” the designer explained.
The result, Grasby hopes, will show off the true nature of marble that fascinated him in the first place.
“These incredible textures and colours are created entirely naturally through the random combination of mineral deposits and tectonic forces. Finally, the marble is cut out of the ground and there you have a perfect slice of the earth, and a glimpse of millions of years of its history,” he said.
“Using marble in the way we do – the broken chunks in Altrock – aims to showcase its raw beauty. The broken edges and chaotic shapes give the stone back some of the texture and materiality that are lost when the material is used intact in vast polished slabs.”
Altrock has recently been used in Hølte’s East London design studio, where the brand creates made to order fronts and worktops for IKEA kitchens.
The London Design Fair is part of London Design Festival, which saw over 400 installations, exhibitions and events taking place across the capital.
With an increased focus on sustainable design, various projects presented throughout the week tackled the idea of recycling and reusing materials that would otherwise have gone to landfill. Projects included a collection of tableware made from industrial clay waste and an exhibition by design consultancy Matter of Stuff, made up entirely of wooden dowels leftover from the company’s 2018 LDF installation.
Photography is by Guy Archard.
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