The Vicenza-based company specializing in stone surfaces has launched its new research and development headquarter in Chiampo, in order to realize precious and unique coverings and artifacts. Here, Diego Crestani, the art director of the department, leads a group of artists, designers, and engineers who work in all fields, experimenting with new processing techniques, aesthetic research, innovative finishes, and particular chromatic shades, with the aim of creating products characterized by luxury and exclusivity.
the Margraf Company: History and Values
The Margraf company, an international leader in the field of extraction and processing of marble and natural stone, has always carried on its strategy of growth and development with the goal of processing and interpreting stone materials in an innovative way, addressing a platform of customers who are not only looking for a natural material like marble but who are also seeking the exclusivity of customization.
Margraf, in fact, boasts an over 100-year-old history. Born in 1906 under the name of Industria di Marmi Vicentini, it initially used the material extracted from a few caves in Chiampo, in the province of Vicenza, and in the Venetian Prealps; from 1935, it has become a constantly-growing reality, turning into Margraf S.p.A. in the 80s and fusing together with the Gruppo Linea Marmo in 1999. At the origin of its success, there undoubtedly is a series of elements that characterize it even today: the attention to technological innovation, the focus on research, the craftsmanship of the processing, and the strong link with the world of international architecture and design.
Wisely extracting the marble from deposits to then turn it into smooth and precious marble slabs, and offering a wide variety of excellent products for architecture are the goals that have made the company known and appreciated all over the world.
the Future of Marble in the New Creative Center
In the Chiampo headquarters, Margraf has launched a new research and development department: the Margraf Innovation Lab. The creative center was strongly advocated by Silvio Xompero, Margraf’s CEO, where artists, designers, and engineers process and interpret stone materials in an innovative way. The new research and development department is conceived as a laboratory where to cross the boundaries of tradition and convention in aesthetic research and processing techniques, experimenting with never-before-seen chromatic nuances and finishes, in order to realize precious unique items or small numbered series of marble coverings and furnishings. Defined as “an atelier of luxury exclusivity”, Margraf Innovation Lab aims at meeting the needs and desires of customers, pursuing a new vision made of innovative solutions. A new frontier in the processing of marble.
the Results of the New Research
Margraf Innovation Lab becomes the birthplace of unique textures to enrich walls, such as “Fluctus”, a collection of 3D coverings inspired by the motion of sea waves and the effect that these have on the bottom of the sea. The Fluctus Collection is available in four different textures, each of which takes its name after a sea: Mediterranean, Aegean, Ionian, and Tyrrhenian Sea, made of Fior di Pesco Carinico®, the exclusive material of which Margraf possesses the only existing quarry in the world, Crema Nuova and Grigio Carnico.
The modules, 80×80 cm in size, and 2 cm thick, present tridimensional, lucid, and opaque finishes that play with the complicity of light, thus mirroring an iridescent visual effect, showing the authentic beauty of marble from a new and dynamic perspective. The collections developed by Margraf Innovation Lab are Margraf’s intellectual proprieties and aim at recovering the tradition of excellence of the old marble processing techniques, rigorously Made in Italy.
