malachite – infinite creativity

have you met malachite yet? it’s one of clé’s most deeply glamorous, sensual, magnetic, and mesmerizing offerings. it’s what we’re hearing designers and their clients are craving now: something dramatic and soul-stirring — yet timeless. of the natural world — yet knowing and supremely sophisticated.

and it’s precisely why clé’s founder deborah osburn conceived of it seven years ago, and why it’s finally gaining such momentum now.

clé malachite is inspired by the stone that lends it its name: a rare stone with unique swirling veins of lighter or darker emerald tones. used since ancient egyptian times as a decorative element, it has also been employed as a talisman to ward off evil spirits, sickness, and suffering.

while the stone itself is small in scale, we instead saw the possibilities of taking a bolder interpretation of nature’s intricate design to bring to life its seductive, dream-like essence, and to give it more of a modern, unexpected edge.

to do this, we employed lithography, a clé-proprietary fine arts process that reproduces high-resolution art images onto fine stones like limestone. it’s a process that took us several years to develop and allows us to do things like bring artists’ works to life on tile, reimagine delftware in our 17th century tile collection, designed by deborah osburn for clé, or — in this case — amplify the beauty of precious stones such as malachite.

deborah created nine different malachite patterns (sold as a bundle) which can be mixed in a variety of different ways to create unique patterns, looks, and moods. the results? infinite variation — both metaphorically and mathematically.

we think this update would look wonderful in any moderately low-traffic area, an instant and unforgettable mood-setter. use it to create a ne plus ultra bathroom (why not use tiles on the ceiling as well, we say), as an accent wall in the ultimate bachelor pad, or behind the bar of that gem of a boutique hotel.

the green is deep and sumptuous, the swirls hypnotic. in fact, let malachite take you wherever your imagination and creativity leads. we’re looking forward to seeing the results.