Marble Earth

Romance of the modern day decor



The ‘Marble Earth’ furniture range plays with our appreciation of chipboard furniture that has a decorative top layer. We tend to like it because it is cheaper than solid wood furniture, but it has an aura of discount brochures and mediocrity because it is usually covered up with wood imitation prints. Why stay with a ‘birch’ cupboard door? An ‘oak’ kitchen work top? Why not embrace the potential of the material? Bart Joachim van Uden re-imagines our self-deceit. He uses images from Google Earth, selected to look just like exclusive natural stone, and combines them with the esthetic details of standard furniture production.


"Like a weed veneer invades today's blossoming furniture industry. Although everyone hates its presence, it continues to thrive. Bart Joachim van Uden knows that the mass-produced staple isn't going away anytime soon. He treats veneer as a diamond in the rough. The Dutch designer and DAE graduate peeled away the humdrum wooden covering and replaced it with metaphoric rock in his project Marble Earth. Van Uden took a free trip around the world via Google Earth and gathered a virtual collection of rocky landscapes from faraway places. Without reinventing the wheel, he clad chipboard cupboards with printed images of aerial views ‘selected to look like exclusive natural stone’. The surfaces of this pieces resemble marble veining. The project shows how designers can evoke the impression of something remote and unseen by assigning a new purpose to what’s already out there." - LG 

FRAME Magazine jan/feb 2017