An atelier of three setters working in small batches — marble, hand-glazed terracotta, fine concrete, and bespoke mosaic. We do not subcontract.
No project is taken on without a first visit, a sketch, and a sample box delivered by hand. The trades who set our work were trained for years, not weeks.
The result is a room that grows older with you — that takes on the soft patina of use, not the dull veneer of wear.
Bookmatched slab on three walls, mitered to a 45° return. We rejected six slabs before settling on this one — the vein had to read as a single gesture from the threshold.
Four-inch zellige from a single kiln run in Fez. We sorted four hundred tiles across the floor of our workshop to balance the wave of color before a single one was set.
We poured a single mass and shaped its face by hand the next morning — the marks of the trowel are the room's only ornament. No two hearths we make are alike.
Quarried Italian, Greek, and Turkish. Sampled by the slab.
Hand-glazed in Fez and Saltillo. Variation is the point.
Hand-cut and laid by us. Geometric and figurative.
Poured in place or precast. Six finishes, three pigments.
Forma was founded by Mara Sant'Elia in 2014 after eight years at the bench of a Tuscan stonemason. The atelier still operates by the same rule: every cut is made by a person whose name you will know.
We work directly with quarries, kilns, and casters — no middlemen, no markup beyond a flat commission. The result is honest pricing and a room that bears the marks of its making.
We hear the same six questions most weeks. Here they are, answered the way we'd answer them on a kitchen counter.
The first visit is free and lasts about an hour. We sit at your kitchen counter, sketch the room, and leave you with three or four material boards. There is no obligation, ever.
studio@forma.tile