Photos of sleek kitchens and bathrooms clad in book-matched marble slabs, honed or polished to perfection, are irresistible eye candy for the design inclined. But no less beautiful are the offcuts, the leftover hunks of marble that might be the wrong size for a backsplash yet nevertheless have their own undeniable appeal.
Daniel Fintzi not only recognized the unrealized potential of these remnants but saw in them a business opportunity as well. In 2006, while working as an interior designer in Milan, where he had also studied, Fintzi traveled to China to oversee a project. He ended up staying in the country, eventually setting up a design practice in Shanghai. It was there that he came up with the idea of transforming marble offcuts into sculptural furniture. “It’s the best place in the world to source marble,” Fintzi says of China. And so, he cofounded Hong Kong–based FORMAR, which produces tables from marble remnants, with Erich Heilemann, who oversees sourcing.
In addition to Fintzi’s own designs, FORMAR produces pieces by talents like Ming Design Studio’s Zhiya (Yona) Huang and Mingshuo Zhang, whose work he had admired for some time before approaching them about working together. Their collaboration resulted a line of Bold marble side tables, one of which, in Orobico, is being offered on 1stDibs. With its smooth, rounded form, rendered in stone marked by wild swirls of contrasting colors, the table is unquestionably alluring. “Your eyes are drawn to it, and your hands are drawn to it,” Fintzi says.
Ming Design Studio originally crafted its Bold series of tables and benches in wood, and FORMAR offers a version in dark-stained ash, in addition to Nero Marquina and Carrara marble. The wood pieces are beautiful, but the combination of the design’s simple form with the depth, visual interest and unpredictability of the stone is magical.
The resulting piece can play a strong supporting role in a room — although perhaps not the bedroom, since, as Fintzi points out, its curved edges makes it less than the ideal surface on which to set a glass of water when you’re half awake.
With that exception, the Bold table can be counted on to add just the right accent to a space. “It’s like a beauty mark,” Fintzi says. “You put it anywhere and it works.”
