Ranieri takes the glazed aesthetic to even more alluring heights 

Ever immersed in our digital domains, witnessing the overlap of trends has in a very abstract form become the equivalent of getting an energy boost. Ranieri’s New Lava Range exemplifies a fascinating detour and evolution of the glazed aesthetic, a cultural phenomenon that has taken the beauty world by storm.

The Italian brand’s innovative approach to using lava has opened up a new realm of possibilities that enhance the material’s varied and inimitable composition. The cutting styles, glazes, effects, finishes, and colorings highlight the nuances of magma in brand-new ways. 

Their birth marked by bittersweet poetry, each piece of lava safeguards and solidifies a poignant expression of the earth in formation. Surfaces flecked with minerals, apertures, metallic shards, and matte fragments, with a variety of shades, colors, textures, and mineral compositions intrinsic to its natural richness, the qualities of lava are unduplicatable. Ranieri’s focus on lava as such a boundlessly open-to-interpretation material conveys the inventiveness of the creative collective. 

Lava is superbly agile and allows a greater range of technical possibilities compared to marble and ceramic which makes it suitable for applications and claddings of different kinds. Volcanic rock has indeed been utilized since ancient times but Ranieri’s fresh outlook and bold approach to it mark a new era of interior and outdoor design.

The design studio’s pioneering treatment of lava stone celebrates and enhances its natural state by expanding the Campania region’s historic craftsmanship and ever-growing love affair with it. As a consequence of their focus on highlighting the stone’s heterogeneity, quality, and rich surfaces, a new type of beauty erupts and ultimately renders lava an innovative and multipurpose material.

Originating from fire, lava stone is the only type of stone capable of withstanding the high temperatures of glaze application for color effects. Ranieri’s styles of cutting allow for the creation of sculptural three-dimensional tiles and elements that can then be thinly glazed. Apart from special nuances and chromatic peculiarities that result from the stone’s naturally varied surface, the brand’s range of glaze options is a definite game-changer.

Lava stone’s strength and versatility make it ideal for a diversified catalog of subjects, including tiles and wall claddings, bar counters and kitchen countertops, outdoor furniture, bathtubs, sinks, bars, reception desks, spa and wellness areas, outdoor spaces, and, as the stone naturally retains heat, swimming pools. 

Other than the Bare variant where lava’s unique and variegated surface is carved and shaped but left free of manipulations, Ranieri’s offerings include translucent colorings, as well as tinted, smooth, and deep colorings. The play between color and lava with a thicker enamel coating allows a subtle perception of a tinted surface. When the surface is tinted, a sheer veil of color highlights the scintillations and clefts of the lava’s surface. While smooth colorings give a highly polished finish of enameled layers with oblique reflections and varying chromatic potency, deep colorings revolve around dense enamel application, with solid hues of profundity and intensity possible only with lava. 

By challenging long-held beliefs about how lava can and should be used—either raw or completely obscured by enamel—Ranieri’s practices have led to the emergence of new design languages and philosophies. The brand’s trailblazing techniques deliberately highlight the nuances of the magma and rejuvenate it in contemporary ways.