The geography of making matters; when a designer sources Carrara marble and ensures it is shaped within a few miles of the quarry, or selects Lombardy timber that never travels far from the mill before becoming furniture, something essential about material authenticity enters the work. Australia-based Paloma Editions operates on this principle of proximity – that objects gain resonance when their transformation remains tethered to origin. This is not merely supply chain logistics but a philosophical stance about how materials carry memory.
Isabella Wilde, a Polish-Australian designer who established the studio in 2023, positions her work against what she frames as consumerist style – the endless churn of trend-driven product that bears no relationship to place or process. The collections emerging from this two-year-old practice reveal an approach grounded in materiality rather than novelty. Cipollino marble, with its distinctive wavy striations reminiscent of onion layers, becomes the defining element in the Isola dining series. This particular stone, quarried primarily in Euboea, Greece, though historically associated with Roman architecture, brings geological time into domestic space.
The Isola collection, which comprises four dining tables, a dining chair, and an artisan stool, inspired by water’s morphology, extends beyond tables to include seating that pairs the stone with brushed oak. This combination – dense marble and lighter timber – establishes material tension that speaks to the collection’s aquatic references without resorting to literal wave forms or fluid gestures. The brushed oak finish, achieved through wire-brushing techniques that expose the wood’s grain structure, provides textural contrast to the marble’s polished surface.
Sky, the studio’s debut objects collection, works within the white onyx palette. This translucent stone, formed through calcite deposits in limestone caves, possesses an inner luminosity that standard marble lacks. Light penetrates onyx surfaces, creating depth perception that shifts with viewing angle and illumination. Vases, trays, and centerpieces in this milky stone become studies in how negative space – the volume contained by vessel walls – interacts with material opacity.
To learn more about the Isola and Sky collections by Paloma Editions, please visit palomaeditions.com.
Photography courtesy of Paloma Editions.
