An Italian beauty enters the room and fills it with her elegant and calm charisma. With an awareness for the classical proportions of a marble Renaissance sculpture, she spreads a natural and exclusive atmosphere that lasts forever. We are talking about the fascinating interior design of Salvatori, the Tuscan supplier of natural stone design. It’s located near Carrara, the capital of the most famous marble deposit in the world. Floors, wall coverings and interior furnishings with a stylish look and luxurious feel are created from naturally grown stone. One’s soul enjoys this experience and finds itself at ease.
Piero Lissoni and John Pawson are only two of the outstanding designers who create special concepts for Salvatori. As sensitive as sculptors, they use their ideas to refine the material into works of art for living and enjoyment. The result is a wealth of defined design products ranging from washbasins and shower trays to tables, bookcases, lamps, mirrors and accessories. There’s no shortage of refinement here. Italian brothers Gabriele and Guido Salvatori, the third-generation family business owners, only use a few selected natural stones whose colours change from white to cream and grey to black. There are also numerous elaborate (and often ingenious) surface treatments of the wall coverings: «Bamboo» serves up fine grooves, «Romboo» has a three-dimensional effect on account of its rhombus shapes, Piero Lissoni has sculpted stone freshly cut like pieces of wood with «Raw», Elisa Ossino creates graphic metallic vertical patterns with «Tratti» – to name just a few examples. The endless combination possibilities of walls, floors, furniture and jewels combine to create an unmistakable Salvatori touch. The rooms and compositions radiate a restrained warmth. Simple and straightforward, but never boring.
Milan – London – Gibswil in the Zurich highlands. What at first doesn’t sound like a logical sequence turns out to make perfect sense with closer inspection. The Gibswil-based Real-Stein AG is a global player when it comes to exclusive designs with natural stone. Individual custom-made products of the highest quality are its trademark. And anyone who sees the beautiful Salvatori products for the first time immediately notices that it’s a perfect match. In Salvatori, Real-Stein has the ideal partner to complement its product range with a modular system and small series. The already sophisticated range of custom-made products gains even greater traction thanks to the partnership with Salvatori. In this way, the most varied customer needs can be met with even greater care. Every wish is fulfilled. The new Premium Partner showroom, which will open in mid-September in Gibswil, is home to 200 square metres of intensity. The designer Silvia Fanticelli is responsible for the layout and brings with her the Salvatori philosophy. As Gabriele Salvatori puts it: «In fact, one of the great pleasures we have experienced is working with talented designers to create pieces which echo our ethos of understated elegance.» The quality of the products is absolutely paramount: they are unique, genuine and everlasting. In their flowing aesthetics, they are eternal and true.
In addition to working with top designers from all over the world, other factors are essential to the Salvatori philosophy: the quality of the processed natural stones as well as the careful, knowledgeable craftsmanship of the employees are an absolute priority. Specially developed lighting concepts conjure up an exciting interplay of light and shadows in interior design. These aspects aside, Salvatori pays particular attention to its responsibility for the environment and the Tuscan landscape. The Salvatori brothers see to it that the natural resources, which are millions of years old, are used sparingly. There’s no lip service here. For this reason, they have developed a new material that protects the environment while fulfilling the Salvatori demand for beauty in design. The innovation is called Lithoverde, and it can do both these things. It is a composite stone, 99 per cent of which consists of stone sections from Salvatori’s production and a mere one per cent of which is natural resin. This material, which has won several awards, can be used to create cool surfaces. The British architect John Pawson even went so far as to build an entire house out of it! With Salvatori, a unique design provider is returning to Switzerland.
