Waste material from the mining and cutting of marble has been used by Italian designer Francesca Gattello to create a range of simple homeware.
Francesca Gattello worked with Rosso Ramina, a small Tuscan ceramic company, to come up with a novel way to reuse the waste material produced when refining raw marble into household items.
The result is Calcarea, a collection of objects based on marble's most important chemical element: calcium. Each item features a two-tone colour palette designed to emphasise the raw material and hand-scored grooves on the lips and bases.
Marble production generates large amounts of waste. Almost 70 percent of the mineral is wasted in the mining, processing and polishing stages. Gattello's solution tried to discover a new way to re-use some of the material.
The designer combined waste stone powder with clay to create an experimental ceramic material, that she then hand-turned on a wheel to create the collection.
"The waste used to create the Calcarea material has a heterogeneous composition," explained Gattello. "For this reason the Calcarea objects colour surprisingly and constantly change, giving a warm shade to the surfaces - sometimes with whitish brush strokes."
The series ranges from pots and cups, to vases and shallow bowls. Three stone vessels in differing sizes come with lids in a darker shade that feature small hand-sewn leather flaps.
Two circular ramekins and a perforated square tray are coupled with a selection of cups, and larger vessels that can be used as a vase or jug.
"Since marble waste is one of the core materials I used to make Calcarea products, the shapes I designed for the collection root in the majestic volumes of ancient classical buildings," explained Gattello.
The Calcarea collection is currently a prototype, but Gattello hopes to start producing the items in larger quantities for sale.
Photography is by Stefano Bellamoli.