Freed from the constraints of frames and flat surfaces, terrazzo may be as versatile as clay. In the London-based sound artist and designer Yuri Suzuki’s Totem assortment of miniature linking toys, the compound kinds stackable palm-size trinkets: pancake-like disks, conical towers, off-kilter spheres and wobbly calisson-shaped boats. Produced by the Majorcan cement and tile producer Huguet as half of a collaboration with the design company Pentagram, the place Suzuki is a associate, the collection invitations each adults and kids to “play and find a composition that they like,” says Suzuki, 42. The whimsically formed objects recall one of the few pre-existing examples of fine-art terrazzo: the kaleidoscopic, glass-specked furnishings by the Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata, a member of the freewheeling ’80s-era Milan-based Memphis Group, which has lengthy impressed Suzuki. “Growing up in Japan, everything was minimalist,” Suzuki recollects, however “the Italian movement was bright.”

Usually, “all we see of rocks is their dusty exterior,” says David Wiseman, 42, a Los Angeles-based artist recognized for his ornate lighting fixtures and furnishings resembling wildlife. But he has equally relied on terrazzo — which he makes utilizing minerals similar to emeralds, opals and jasper — for over a decade as a supply of colour in his in any other case restrained palette of bronze and porcelain. At his studio in Frogtown, shaping the fabric into advanced natural kinds — for instance, the adverse area in an undulating biomorphic stool’s bronze latticework seat — is one of his most labor-intensive duties. “I can only do one little angle at a time,” Wiseman says. His exact compositions reveal every gem’s deep jewel tones and delicate veining, providing a glimpse into what he calls the “interior world of rocks.”

Other makers, nonetheless, are forgoing rocks altogether. The 38-year-old British Chinese designer Elaine Yan Ling Ng’s dappled, terrazzoesque rectangular Carrelé tiles, which are available zellige-like shades similar to blush and jade inexperienced, are produced from crushed eggshells discarded by bakeries and restaurant kitchens. And the French designer Anna Saint Pierre, 32, creates her speckled Granito flooring floor by setting chunks of development particles in limestone, terra cotta and black-tinted concrete, engaged on website throughout renovation tasks to repurpose scraps in situ. It’s a technique that recollects the make-do spirit from which terrazzo arose — but additionally one which underscores its potential in an period that requires extra sustainable supplies and fewer anticipated quarries. “Stones,” and doable stand-ins, says Saint Pierre, “are lying all over the place.”

Photo assistant: Timothy Mulcare