Description:
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
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