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Monolith Studio

Marc Personick / Monolith · 2023–

OVERVIEW

A New York studio founded by Marc Personick, which released its first collection in 2023. The pieces are cut from raw volcanic stone and wood and made by hand with craftsmen in Mexico.

The catalogue is numbered rather than named: M_001, M_005, M_013. Chairs, benches, consoles, tables and lamps, each one a small number of heavy elements resting on each other.

WHY IT MATTERS

A current expression of brutalist furniture using volcanic stone, wood and architectural mass without becoming retro pastiche.

CONTEXT

The studio's own description places the work between furniture and collectible design, which is the market it sells into: gallery editions rather than production runs.

Volcanic stone is the decisive choice. It is porous, matte and mid-grey, so it reads as mass without the polish that makes stone furniture look expensive in the usual way.

WHAT TO NOTICE

  1. 01Weight is legibleProportions are thick past the point of structural need. The pieces are designed to look immovable, and they are.
  2. 02The stone is left openVolcanic rock keeps its pores. Light sits in the surface rather than reflecting off it, which is why the grey never looks like concrete.
  3. 03Assembly by stackingMost pieces are two or three volumes meeting on a flat plane. The joint is gravity.
  4. 04Numbered, not namedM_001 through M_014. The catalogue refuses the story that collectible design usually attaches to an object.

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