Marble

About

Marble is limestone transformed by heat and pressure into a mass of interlocking crystals. It carves cleanly, takes a high polish and lets light penetrate slightly below the surface, which gives white marble a soft luminosity. Coloured varieties, veined green, red, black or yellow, have been prized for columns, floors and inlay.

The Parthenon (447–432 BC) was built and carved in marble from Mount Pentelikon near Athens, and the Romans shipped coloured stones from across their empire. Gian Lorenzo Bernini made the stone look as soft as flesh in The Rape of Proserpina (1621–22), and 19th-century neoclassical sculptors, among them Hiram Powers in Florence and Edmonia Lewis in Rome, made white marble the language of ideal form. In the 20th century Isamu Noguchi carved it into abstract sculpture, and Eero Saarinen's Tulip Table (1957) often carries a marble top. Look for veining, crystalline sparkle and polished depth.