For one week every April, fiera fever subsumes Milan to the extent that many businesses, shops and hotels make approximately half of their entire annual income. Everyone in the business of design descends on the city to find inspiration in Italy’s “industrial” capital, from the RHO fairground itself to the elegant ancient marble palazzos and showrooms in town. This year, as ever, these spaces play host to all manner of contemporary design wizardry, but one macro trend is exhibited more poignantly here than at any other international design fair that I’ve visited lately: a collision of ancient and modern and a swathe of new masterpieces in marble.  The trend for marble (and maybe it’s not a trend so much as a fundamental shift towards solid and lasting materials) has been on the rise for some years. When, thanks to the late James Irvine, Marsotto Edizione launched five years ago with a collection of smooth contemporary pieces made solely from white Carrara, heads turned, and people audibly cooed. Around the same time Established & Sons launched its “Design Art” arm, basically replicating its most popular pieces in the same majestic, ghostly white stone.  Since then, everyone has been at it and that’s absolutely fine by me: designing in marble is no more derivative than building in wood. It’s a beautiful material that deserves more space in our lives, especially when new technologies with which to cut and shape it mean we’re witnessing new marble pioneers doing all kinds of unexpected and ethereal things.  While Marsotto dedicated last year’s moving Salone exhibition to its founding partner and designer James Irvine with a beautiful collection of his pieces in black, this year, it is moving on, with new commissions including a vast and stunning reception desk by new recruit Philippe Nigro.  At Spazio Rossana Orlandi – now one of the Salone’s most popular and bustling destinations – Scholten & Baijings stepped up their game with a series of five breathtaking marble tables for the Italian company Luce di Carrara in Tuscany. Meanwhile Caesarstone’s new ping-pong table by Raw Edges (who also designed a number of other pieces for the company), lifts the material to playful new heights.  Italian marble inlay company Budri has had a huge hit on its hands lately with Patricia Urquiola’s refreshingly upbeat Earthquake 5.9 collection. This Salone it launches the Rabbet collection, which it describes as “a fairy-tale in which marble expresses a language of purity and simplicity by means of shapes and colours”. It’s complicated, but it looks fabulous. Geometrical inlays in pastel-shaded onyx and travertine emerge and create an architectural landscape. She’s also come up with the Origami Desk, showing at 10 Corso Como, constructed in marble but in a form that suggests it were paper.  While marble rightfully has a reputation as being a monumental material best suited to the massive, its weightiness can be just as attractive in small items too. At Spazio Pontaccio’s fabulous Supper Scene dinner and installation Bethan Gray sold her much published humbug striped tableware for the first time, and Lee Broom launched his fun new On The Rocks glasses, which the Flintstones and Lord Gatsby would look equally at home drinking from.  While the stone suppliers are heavily encouraging the rush of creativity, the marble love is overspilling. At Hay’s Brera space, Swedish design firm Happy Forsman & Bodenfors built a “Chameleon Cabin” for printer Göteborgstryckeriet. The opposite of Budri’s Origami desk, it’s constructed from paper, but printed with a marble pattern. At Fornasetti Nigel Coates bulbous new modular sofas are upholstered with a malachite marble print textile, and at Nendo’s showcase for Glas Italia, “Brushstroke” is a series of super simple pieces in which glass is given a marble look by adding layers of paint.  Have we seen enough? I heard at least one grumble to that effect about town, meanwhile there are plenty of alternative stones to discover too. (Formafantasma are touting the benefits of local lava at Gallery Libby Sellers, for example.) But when it comes to Milan we’re only getting started, and it’s in Milan where it shines because it’s here that it really belongs. Carrara marble has been used by Italian architects, designers, and sculptors like it was going out of fashion ever since Michelangelo bust a (highly-toned) gut from it for his five metre tall David. Perhaps it never did go out of fashion exactly, certainly it’s rocking more than ever right now.  Salone del Mobile is from 8-13 April
Marble has loomed large at this year's Salone del Mobile. Henrietta Thompson reports on the renaissance of this timeless classic