At first glance of Benjamin Hubert’s Quarry Lamps for De La Espada, I’m reminded of another recent lamp with an intriguing organic aesthetic: Nir Meiri’s Desert Storm Lamp took the intricacy and delicacy of desert sand and turned it into a beautifully modulated shade. Hubert’s equally innovative creation does much the same thing, though in the latter’s case the material in question is, surprisingly, none other than quarry-farmed marble.

Quarry Lamp. Designed by Benjamin Hubert. Manufactured by De La Espada.

The Quarry Lamp by Benjamin Hubert for De La Espada Finds a Creative New Use for an Antique Material

Like Meiri’s Desert Storm, Hubert’s Collection of Quarry Lamps each display a striking originality and fantastic aesthetic. And I don’t mean fantastic in the sense of “great,” (though they are that), but rather in the sense of something heretofore-unseen.

Hubert constructs his hand-turned, thin-walled marble pendant lights through a process of delicate—if dramatic and comprehensive—sculpting. In what is essentially an inverse of Michelangelo’s notion about the form imprisoned within, Hubert discovers the form held without.

This is because Hubert removes the inside of each of his Quarry Lamps, thus leaving a shiny shell and roughened interior to “add texture and describe the story of stone production.” The marble surface left behind is sufficiently thin to allow the transmission of light—facilitated via De La Espada’s diminutive LEDs—which reveals the unique veining of each quarried piece of marble.

Via Contemporist.

About the Manufacturer: De La Espada does it all. Founded by Luis De Oliveira and Fatima De La Espada in 1993, the firm began as a leading designer and manufacturer of modern solid wood furniture. Since opening their first store in London in 1996, De La Espada has evolved into a design-manufacture-development company partnered with some of the biggest names in design: “In most cases we partner with leading designers who art direct their own product line.” Among the latter one finds such illustrious personae as Benjamin Hubert, Autoban, Leif.designpark, and Matthew Hilton.