Galeana Chair

Jorge Diego Etienne presents a 250kg alabaster chair manually sculpted from a single stone at Zona Maco Diseño 2023. This monumental piece pushes the boundaries of artisanal Alabaster production in Galeana, Nuevo León, taking months of painstaking work to define its smooth curves and surfaces.

Since 2020, Jorge Diego Etienne has explored through different design exercises the production and distribution of alabaster artisanal objects, a material that is abundant in the municipality of Galeana, in the south of the state of Nuevo León, Mexico.
After his first collection of 6 functional sculptural objects such as a vase, bowl, and stool, the designer used his learnings to tackle a new challenge in working on a large-scale piece. The aesthetic language is characterized by combining forms of monumental architecture with classical gestures, with predominant volumes and calculated voids that bring life to each piece.
The new resting chair is made from a massive, half a ton block of alabaster extracted from the surface of the fields in Galeana. It is the result of 3 years of close collaboration with the master craftsman Francisco Charles in the creation of these pieces, who for at least five decades has maintained a deep emotional and respectful bond with this material and the environment that surrounds it.

The dialogue between designer and craftsman occurs through digital modeling, 3D printing and volumetric models that are interpreted by the master using pencil, chisel, hand tools, sandpaper and wedges, in turn adding his son Javier in the process.
Each stone is carefully selected and extracted, giving them a unique and unrepeatable identity. Galeana has one of the best deposits of this variety of calcium sulfate in the world, characterized by the pure white color that is obtained by extracting it directly from the ground. The detail, precision and patience in each stroke of the master craftsman results in a velvety and precise finish that amazes to the touch of this new chair.

What began as an exercise in design and crafts quickly became a research project, triggering an itinerant exhibition that examines the social, economic and cultural factors that have influenced the current context of Galeana and the lack of artisans, workshops and initiatives around the work of alabaster.

The Galeana chair builds a bridge between the traditional process of carving this stone and a contemporary proposal for a useful, timeless and transcendent design.