Product Description

This lavishly produced catalog outlines the technical characteristics of fine marble: quality, workability, availability, and aesthetic features; offers photographic samples of sixty varieties; and gives information about the production, historical use, and suppliers of the materials. An additional gallery of photographs shows examples of built works using these marbles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #144829 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-26
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .72" h x 8.18" w x 12.02" l, 2.49 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Amazon.com
Florence-based Studio Marmo provides marketing materials to stone suppliers worldwide, and in that sense, Fine Marble in Architecture is kind of like a straightforward, coffee table-quality shopper's catalog for designers, builders, their clients, and anyone else who wants a working primer of the finest marbles available for big-ticket, high-profile projects. After an introduction that lays out the basic traits, history, strengths, weaknesses, uses, and technical details of the best marbles, the book becomes a guide to some 48 different varieties, including polychrome and monochrome breccias, ophiolithic-type green marbles, quartzites, stones, and granites. A handsome full-color blowup of each marble in question appears on every right-hand page while a rundown of its aesthetic characteristics, locale and mode of production, workmanship, and history (including distinguished sites that incorporate it) appear on the left, sometimes along with contact information for a producer or distributor (nearly all in Italy).

Finally, there's a portfolio of built works utilizing various marbles. From a ninth-century Indian temple to the Jefferson Memorial to the Trump Tower, the authors make it clear this book isn't a do-it-yourselfer for homeowners looking to install a marble birdbath. There's also a CD-ROM with all the samples from the book, if you want to pass around swatches electronically. This could well be the standard-bearer for fine-marble references--there's really nothing else quite like it. --Timothy Murphy

About the Author
Studio Marmo has offices in New York City and Florence, Italy.