Massolo Coffee Table

Massolo looks like a rough block of porphyry, yet it weighs only 13 kg. Piero Gilardi designed it in 1974 as a low table in Gufram's tradition of the true-fake: a heavy stone that turns out to be soft and light. The word PORFIDO, worked into the surface, names the stone it imitates but does not contain.

Each block is rough-hewn from polyurethane and then painted with twelve layers of dripping colour in eight different shades, sealed with Guflac®. The long process gives the surface its depth and sheen, and it makes every Massolo slightly different from the next.

Massolo is limited to 500 pieces and measures 97 × 66 cm at a height of 36 cm, low enough to sit in front of a sofa. It is part of the collection of the Art & Design Atomium Museum in Brussels. Gilardi's Sassi apply the same idea to a group of stones that serve as a pouf.