No stone unturned

Budri, the Italian company renowned for its original craftsmanship in marble, has launched a limited edition of 15 ophthalmic frames and sunglasses made from the luxury rock.

The types of marble selected by the company are obtained from quarries situated in different parts of the world.

To handle the challenges of working with the unusual eyewear material, the company’s laboratory employs skilled chemists, engineers and geologists, who study each stone's porosity, strength, absorbency and reactions. A special fibre, patented and engineered by Budri, gives the front and sides of the eyewear greater strength and a lighter weight.

On average, it takes 25 hours of processing to obtain a finished, polished, ready-to-wear frame.

In the new collection, the Palladio aviator frame is produced in two exclusive colour versions, ‘Denim’ and ‘Rain Forest.’

The bright blue marble of ‘Denim’ is derived from a crystalline metamorphic rock obtained from only one quarry in the world, in Turkey.

‘Rain Forest’ uses a material, obtained from the Udaipur quarry in India, featuring a range of greens running from olive and forest green through to acid green, with pronounced brown veins covering the surface of the material like tree roots, or fossilised branches.

The expressive, sculpted ‘Canova’ model achieves an original character through the use of Serrancolin Versailles, a luxury marble quarried high in the Pyrenees. The stone has a cream, light brown, grey background colour and dramatic brick red, ochre yellow and olive green veins.

The dappling of the bright colours across the plain background resembles the effects seen in French Impressionist paintings. 

The stone was quarried for the production of massive columns at the time of the Roman Empire, and four gigantic blocks of Serrancolin were used in the construction of Louis XIV's royal palace at Versailles in France.

Budri chose Zeiss lenses for its new Marble Eyewear Collection.

For more information, visit the Budri website.