Meeting QuartzForms at The Milan Design Show 2023
Cassie and I were very excited to see Quartzforms at Salon de mobile. They had a great stand featuring full size slabs as well as tables, stools and displays made from Quartzforms quartz. The guys on the stand made us extremely welcome and also invited us to visit their flagship Showroom in the centre of Milan for “Happy Hour”
Quartzforms
We really enjoy working with Quartzforms. We find their range contains some unique materials whose look fits perfectly into the current trend towards a bit more colour and warmth.
Quartzforms Forest Series
– from our blog last year
Quartzforms Lagoon
One of the Quartzforms materials which has proved particularly popular recently is Saturn – a sort of peanut-butter colour with a soft lighter vein. Another colour that has worked really well for some of our customers is Lagoon with its stunning green vein mixed with gold. Quartzforms Lagoon goes beautifully with the mid- and dark-green kitchen cabinet doors that are currently in vogue.
Quartzforms Saturn
(You can see more images of Saturn in the gallery at the end of this article)
Quartzforms and Crystalline Silica
There has been a big push by the major quartz brands to reduce crystalline silica in quartz.
Crystalline silica is the mineral in quartz that can be harmful to stonemasons when dust is produced during fabrication processes like cutting and polishing. There is no risk once the worktops are installed, but worktop manufacturer can be really dangerous without proper precautions. Some precautions have to with water sprays and dust extraction at the cutting point, air-cleaning processes in our workshops and disciplined use of masks and other PPE by our masons. It was to encourage good practice in these areas of Health and Safety and Quality that Affordable Granite helped form the Worktop Fabricators Federation some years ago.
Quartz for kitchen worktops is a man-made product. This means that, in principle, the combinations of minerals in the mix can be changed. Cassie and I were really impressed to see Quartzforms’ new range. They have managed to drop the crystalline silica content to less than 3%, vastly reducing risk to stonemasons and fabricators. This is amazing – and what’s more they look really great too! The Range called “Ecotone” has four colours in it at the moment and eventually all the Quartzforms materials will be available using this low crystalline silica technology.
The current Ecotone range:
(from left)
Gold – a lovely veined gold with white back- ground
Nirvana – a stunning anthracite grey-black with white veins
Mystic – a greige colour stone
Atlantis – really lovely pale verdigris Green
As its name implies, the Quartzforms Ecotone range is not only better for stonemasons’ lungs, but for the planet too!
In common with other big-name quartz worktop suppliers, Quartzforms is pushing hard towards:
Maximising use of recycled materials
Recycling 100% of the huge amounts of water required in manufacture
Use of energy only from renewable sources (wind/water/solar) in the factories
Having Quartzforms kitchen worktops should not cost lives – or the planet!
AG with Quartzforms: Milan 2023
Here are just a few photos showcasing our time with Quartzforms at Milan. The images are from our own visit, plus the company’s own slab, swatch, worktop installation and moodpboard images:
All in all we were welcomed and had a great time with Quartzforms
… and hope to be doing far more quartz worktop installations using their materials. Watch this space for more blogs and (we hope) Quartzforms case studies.
Images copyright © Quartzforms, Naomi King and Cassie Barbasio
