The boom in exploring new materials brings lots of innovative proposals to eyewear, some fabulous, well researched and carefully developed. Among a pack of start-ups at the Milan fair last weekend, one Italian company, Morà, showed marble frames, lined with carbon fibre, to create an artisan product that requires complex high-tech processing and painstaking hand-finishing. The collection has been achieved thanks to expertise at Officine Polimata, Italian specialists in the field of precision engineering using numerical control technology. The frames undergo 35 industrial processing steps and 78 hand-finishing steps – quite incredible really – and some designs include titanium and semi precious stones for a unique custom finish. Available from September 2016, the look and feel of these designs varies tremendously depending on the natural colour, striated patterns and texture of the marble or stone (above, an example of a frame in Carrara marble) from which they are created, and the decorative titanium inserts, finished in subtle tones of gold, palladium or gunmetal. www.mora-eyewear.com CN
