Sten Studio designs objects and furniture with minerals at their core. As a result, every piece is unique, thanks to the stones’ color, pattern, and texture. The studio's experimentation with rock crystals bridges its passion for geology and industrial design, a previously unchartered path in the world of haute-décor.
The collection presented in New York evokes the depths of inner and outer worlds – from the greatest profundities of Earth to the faraway confines of galaxies known or still to be discovered. As geometry orders the universe –think of the ornate daintiness of beehives, the luring stripes found in magmatic rocks, or the perfect silhouettes of different planets and satellites– we are inspired by its intriguing complexity. Thus, the featured pieces stem from the tension harbored by opposites: they explore symmetrical and asymmetrical forms; their shapes and materials simultaneously create contrast and union.
The vast range of employed materials stresses our admiration for the mineral world and highlights its abounding diversity – limestones that are found in cliffs and quarries, rocks that witness the passing of time as lava and magma turn solid, highly-reflective crystals that are the product of volcanic activity, semi-precious stones that populate the Earth’s crust, or even fossilized remains of terrestrial vegetation. Through the studio’s intricate manipulation, the material outcome elegantly mimics natural phenomena such as the change of the seasons or astral eclipses, and they bring to the fore the millennial appreciation of these materials by different cultures.
Among the pieces, Honeycomb table stands out, which is a piece made of obsidian and cooper which from an architectural viewpoint, the hexagons that constitute a honeycomb’s structure enable an incredibly efficient spatial distribution as they leave no part unused. Therefore, this table mimics the modular potential of the honeycomb forms, suggesting a design that can continue expanding itself.
The design studio also will launch for the first time a new series of stools inspired in the volcanic shades. Through an abstracted geometric language – a ludic set of variations between squares and circles– these stools seek to establish a millenary connection with Earth itself. Serving as a visual metaphor for volcanoes that, through their craters, open faultlines into the Earth's core, they are made from square-shaped blocks of a variant of lava stone and circles carved out of different kinds of onyx. As those materials originate in a geological time scale, each piece is a time capsule compressing a temporal span alien to human understanding.
Moreover, Sten Studio is presenting another new series of wall installations called Sprawling Galaxies. Galaxies are systems where stars, dust, and dark matter are gravitationally bound. Usually classified by their visual appearance, these systems are conformed by cosmic bodies of distinctly vivid colors, which create a scenic landscape with the most varied hues and patterns. This circular installation creates a fictional, sprawling galaxy in which its spheric- carved semi-precious stones (labradorite, pyrite, kabamba jasper, black opal, rhodolite, dendritic white agate, obsidian, selenite, and different sorts of quartz) and petrified wood are arranged in two concentric hoops. Given that the darkest spheres are placed in the inner ring, it proposes an impossible yet alluring stellar configuration.
