Free of the constraints of frames and flat surfaces, terrazzo might be as versatile as clay. Within the London-based sound artist and designer Yuri Suzuki’s Totem assortment of miniature linking toys, the compound types stackable palm-size trinkets: pancake-like disks, conical towers, off-kilter spheres and wobbly calisson-shaped boats. Produced by the Majorcan cement and tile producer Huguet as a part of a collaboration with the design company Pentagram, the place Suzuki is a accomplice, the collection invitations each adults and kids to “play and discover a composition that they like,” says Suzuki, 42. The whimsically formed objects recall one of many few pre-existing examples of fine-art terrazzo: the kaleidoscopic, glass-specked furnishings by the Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata, a member of the freewheeling ’80s-era Milan-based Memphis Group, which has lengthy impressed Suzuki. “Rising up in Japan, every little thing was minimalist,” Suzuki recollects, however “the Italian motion was shiny.”
Normally, “all we see of rocks is their dusty exterior,” says David Wiseman, 42, a Los Angeles-based artist recognized for his ornate lighting fixtures and furnishings resembling natural world. However he has equally relied on terrazzo — which he makes utilizing minerals corresponding to emeralds, opals and jasper — for over a decade as a supply of coloration in his in any other case restrained palette of bronze and porcelain. At his studio in Frogtown, shaping the fabric into complicated natural types — for instance, the unfavorable area in an undulating biomorphic stool’s bronze latticework seat — is one in all his most labor-intensive duties. “I can solely do one little angle at a time,” Wiseman says. His exact compositions reveal every gem’s deep jewel tones and delicate veining, providing a glimpse into what he calls the “inside world of rocks.”
Different makers, nevertheless, are forgoing rocks altogether. The 38-year-old British Chinese language designer Elaine Yan Ling Ng’s dappled, terrazzoesque rectangular Carrelé tiles, which are available zellige-like shades corresponding to blush and jade inexperienced, are produced from crushed eggshells discarded by bakeries and restaurant kitchens. And the French designer Anna Saint Pierre, 32, creates her speckled Granito flooring floor by setting chunks of development particles in limestone, terra cotta and black-tinted concrete, engaged on web site throughout renovation tasks to repurpose scraps in situ. It’s a technique that recollects the make-do spirit from which terrazzo arose — but additionally one which underscores its potential in an period that requires extra sustainable supplies and fewer anticipated quarries. “Stones,” and doable stand-ins, says Saint Pierre, “are mendacity in every single place.”
Picture assistant: Timothy Mulcare
