Hasta La Ideas

French-Lebanese designer Carla Baz has unveiled a collection of marble furniture and lighting, including tables filled with pools of colourful resin.

Debuted at Beirut’s Joy Mardini Gallery during the city’s annual design week, the marble pieces include lights, tables and other items of furniture all made in Beirut.

Called Stratagems, the furniture collection is the result of Baz’s experiments in marble, and in particular, her efforts to showcase the material’s fragility and delicacy by using only thin slabs.

The series of low tables, made from various different colours of marble, feature thin tops with slightly dipped surfaces. By carving away 2 millimetres of the marble, Baz creates recesses which are then filled with colourful resin.

The resin creates a two-tone effect on the surface with the natural pattern of the stone showing through.

“Through our experiments we have sometimes chosen specific natural colours, sometimes decided to use a simple white marble as a canvas for a more audacious approach, tainting it with bolder colors with resin,” said Baz.

“Whether in its pure form or as a result of this series of tests, marble never ceases to offer different possibilities and outcomes, making it a very exciting journey.”

A series of table and floor lamps feature stems lined with semi-circular discs of marble to create flower-like formations, while the shelving units are made up of horizontal and vertical slabs of marble and frosted glass slotted together.

“By decontextualizing the material, we have managed to create a collection of pieces that are gracious while having character, bold while being valuable,” concluded Baz.

“The pieces are an invitation to revisit what we know about marble and to allow ourselves to be more experimental and open, all the while respecting the integrity of the subject.”

Baz is not the first designer to experiment with resin and stone. Italian designer Moreno Ratti has previously cast marble shapes within blocks of transparent resin to create an unusual series of vases, while more recently Italian design studio Alcarol teamed up with Tuscan stone company Vaselli to create a table and stools made from eroded Travertine encased in resin.

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