Marble is a metamorphic rock that has been used for centuries in architecture, art and construction due to its indisputable beauty and extraordinary resistance. The value and price of marble depends on many factors including age (some precious marbles are around 190 million years old!), rarity, chromatic mix, resistance, workability and difficulty of extraction activities and transport. Therefore, due to their high price, precious marble types are mainly used for luxury projects or for high-value works of art.
The most precious marble (or among the most precious ones) is undoubtedly white Carrara marble, extracted in Tuscany and characterized by a brilliant white, sometimes tending towards ivory, and magnificent gray veins. This precious marble has been used for centuries all over the world for the creation of statues, sculptures and important buildings such as the Pantheon in Rome and Michelangelo’s David.
Another very expensive marble is Statuario marble: pure white marble with thin gray veins. This precious marble is very hard and durable and is used to create high quality works of art and for luxury wall tiles.
Calacatta marble is another rare marble characterized by precious gray and gold veins. It is among the most precious marbles used for the creation of luxury coverings, floors and stairs.
Another white marble in the list of the finest marble is Thassos marble. Extracted from only ten quarries on the island of Thassos in Greece, this valuable marble with a crystalline white background and no veins is considered the whitest marble in the world.
Among the most precious marble in black, we cannot fail to mention Portoro marble and Belgian black marble. Portoro marble is an Italian stone of an intense black color with golden veins extracted in the Portovenere area (in the province of La Spezia). Due to its unique chromatic characteristics and the difficulties associated with its extraction (the extraction area is very delicate from a landscape and naturalistic point of view and the extraction activity is thus managed with extreme care), Portoro marble is considered among the most valuable marble types in the world. The difficult availability also distinguishes Belgian black marble whose quarries are located underground and have a very limited production capacity. Black Belgian marble stands out among the precious black marbles thanks to its intense and absolute black color.
Finally, there are also very expensive colored marble stones. One of the flagships of the French stone industry, Brèche de Vendôme is a purple marble with a polychrome surface adorned with unmistakable multicolored arabesques. Blue marble par excellence, blue Sodalite slab is a real precious marble: the availability of blue Sodalite slab is very scarce and the presence of lazulite inside it (considered by many to be a gem), as well as giving it its characteristic blue cobalt color, further embellish this extraordinary precious marble from South America.
Luxurious furniture in lightweight marble
Dedalo is a company from Carrara that designs and produce monolithic luxurious furnishings in lightened marble, with a contemporary design. Our goal is to reaffirm the use of marble in everyday life without renouncing, for reasons of weight, to its three-dimensional vocation, proposing sculptural and extremely engaging shapes.
