LEDS Alabaster Lighting

ALABASTER, A NATURAL STONE

The identification of a raw material with the product resulting of its manufacture, makes the knowledge of them even more dificult; Alabaster is a good example of this.

As a raw material, it is a crystalline material (hydrated calcium sulphate - gypsum-), with off-white color, translucent, density 2.350 kg/m3 and a Mhos Hardness of 2,3 to 2,5.

It is found in Nature in bulky, irregular round shapes, in different sizes and variable depths, mixed with other materials like marls or clays which protect alabaster against exterior agents.

The most important alabaster reservoirs are located in Spain (along the Ebro river) as well as in Italy in the surroundings of Pisa (the earlier Etruscan region). Extraction is usually made in the open, using non-aggressive methods that must ensure the integrity of the material as well as its homogeneity and its crystallinity and natural veining.

Products obtained from alabaster stone have had a very diverse historic evolution; Firstly, the Egyptians and also the Greek and Chinese cultures used it to make artisan products; Afterwards, it was used in Spain in reredos and altarpieces of churches and monasteries, a masterpiece being the one in the Poblet Monastery. At the beginning of this century, ART-DECO and ART-NOUVEAU designers used it for the first time as diffuser of light to design decorative fitting., (taking advantage of its transparency and natural graining).

In the middle of the 80´s, the recovery of DECO´s style in interior design boosted the re-introduction of alabaster as a material, competing with crystal and other acrylic materials, and mainly contributing, as novelty, the fact that it was a "natural product made by hand".

Alabaster products, due to the natural graining that give the character of "uniqueness" to each piece, together with the artisan elaboration and the conceptual beauty of "exclusiveness" have finally entered with force in the Interior Design and decorative Illumination world at the end of this century, arriving to inspire emblematic works of universal architects as Fisher, Arribas or Moneo among others.