Barbara Giuntoni has been working in the marble industry for more than 20 years. Her ideas on gender equality and environmental protection tend to ruffle feathers. But giving up is out of the question.
Barbara Giuntoni makes her living with marble: she sells her customers floor tiles, slabs, and architectural elements for bathrooms, gardens, facades, and more. Much of it is machine-produced and then finished by hand. But the native Tuscan’s true passion lies in her design projects. Under the name Marba Marmi, the 49-year-old primarily recycles scrap material for these projects.
Even after more than 20 years, she’s still searching: for her rightful place in the male-dominated world of Italian design. And for buyers who understand her concept of sustainable production. Even as a little girl, Giuntoni loved the silence. There’s plenty of that in Fossone, a small village in the hills above Carrara. Giuntoni is an outdoorsy kid; she loves going into the woods and playing by the water. Or she’d watch her father, Marino, who worked as a heating technician and was a constantly inventive tinker. His advice to his daughter: Nature is the best teacher. If you want to learn about forms, take your cue from her. As a child, Giuntoni had no interest in marble as a material or the industry behind it.
But she remembers one memorable piece of marble furniture: the kitchen table in her parents’ home, made of Bianco Carrara, marked by the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It wasn’t spared any wear and tear: her mother kneaded pasta, ironed, and baked there, while Giuntoni and her brothers did their homework, played, and romped around on it. Over the decades, the table acquired what Giuntoni calls a “vintage patina.” As a young professional just starting out, she quickly went into business for herself, initially with a small furniture boutique. Since it didn’t become a huge success, Giuntoni turned to interior design, beginning to redesign the interiors of villas in the region, and later in France and Belgium as well.
But she didn’t find true fulfillment in that work. “My city eventually pushed me to take a step back—away from the finished villas, back to the raw materials.” Giuntoni, who grew up right next to the marble quarries, didn’t truly get to know them until she was a young adult—“with all their qualities and problems.” She is fascinated by the view of the marble mountains and the beauty of the material. She spoke with workers who had been quarrying for decades, with artisans and sculptors. And she observed the immense yield—the countless blocks that heavy trucks transport down the narrow gravel roads day after day.
“Ever since then, I’ve dreamed of marble quarrying that respects nature’s timing. We’ve largely lost the traditional view of Tuscan artists, who saw the material as something to be discovered. There are tons of quarried blocks just waiting for someone to use them. We don’t always have to extract more and more material at an ever-faster pace.” After all, marble is actually timeless—the designer is averse to the trends that the market creates and then buries. “In fashion, for example, designers draw inspiration from past styles and cuts. Why shouldn’t that work in interior design?”
Read more in STEIN 2/2020.
