A shaping matter, a prehistoric weapon, a time-traveler, a mineral so kindred to our own flesh and bones, a monument, a tool, a resource, a treasure, an everlasting weight – what is a stone in a reflection of a human eye, mind and touch? The archaeological discourse tends to emphasize, that stone draws our attention through its’ diverse take on durability. Be it lithic tools, monumental architecture, softness of marble or allure of gemstones, embedded in objects of status and care. Stone can embody both surplus and rarity, rigidness and frailty, stiffness and immense vital force. From the dawn of the man, used both for building and destruction, stone remains a critical resource in construction, infrastructure, and geopolitics.
Such rich layers of significance and meaning reflect geological stratigraphy with a poetic whim. When we as living organisms, dwelling on a cosmic stone are restlessly fighting each other for the said stone and the most valuable pieces of it – how does it deepen the question on how we understand materials at their core? What do we mean, then, by inert matter when it acts so powerfully upon us? Can stone be considered alive? The foundational separation between life and non-life becomes porous when we consider the origin of stones – such as limestone, formed through the pressure of time and earthly forces from remains of ancient marine organisms.
American eco-theory scholar Jeffrey Jerome Cohen had observed that human bipedalism was supported by minerals infiltrating animal life eons ago. Vertebral bone – be it vertical in humans or horizontal in quadrupeds, became the foundation stone around which the flesh arranged itself to slither, swim, fly, prance, gallop and, finally – walk. Later, humans externalized this mineral partnership through architecture – constructing an urban exoskeleton of sun-dried clay bricks and stone walls to enclose, support, organize and regulate human life thus channeling collective existence.
Such mineral entanglement also reflects how power organizes the distinction between life and non-life. Here the concept of geontology, as developed by Elizabeth A. Povinelli, comes into mind, as it examines how colonial and late-liberal systems define and govern the boundaries between life and nonlife: between humans, stones, air, and ancestral land. The urban exoskeleton does not merely regulate bodies and goods; it materializes a worldview in which stone becomes a mean of control. But stone, being such a polysemous material, invites us to rethink its “toolness” and impact beyond domination and control. Here theories of vibrant matter might come in handy as they reflect on radical and often uneasy kinship between human and non-human. American scholar Jane Bennet agrees with Bruno Latour on the thought that some intrinsically charged materials can act as non-human actants – capable not only on being affected, but to affect as well. Just as looking at amber’s material agency, one can uncover that stone, often regarded as inert, is an active and even forceful participant in human life.
The exhibited design objects are linked by the thread of amber‘s degree of autonomy and influence on human actions and perceptions. Aesthetic and functional forms assist the author in imbuing them with ritualistic references. However, the objects themselves are empty, inviting the viewer to fill them with interpretations, just as newly found archeological artefacts do.
II. Yearning x Touching
How vibrant is a common stone? Do you catch yourself thinking of it, desiring it, yearning for it? How does its vibrant materiality manifest in everyday presence of the stone? Let’s gaze upon marble, that seduces us with its sheen, draws in with its weight, and captures with persistent endurance. The myth of Pygmalion captures this allure: through touch, sculpture’s curves seem to waver between artifice and life, revealing that material power resides as much in intimacy as in its form. Here stone’s agency extends beyond its geological origins as it autonomously affects how we feel, perceive, and act.
Stone may overwhelm us with its scale and deep time, yet it also invites closeness. The stone guides a hand to touch it and work on it just as the hand yearns for it. What if the intense allure of material is itself erotic or something that Walter Benjamin called “the sex appeal of inorganic”? Polished curves of marble statues, flickering pull of gemstones, intimidating attraction of granite stripes: the non-organic often carries a very intimated, even sexual charge. The sex appeal of the inorganic is a way to give voice to what could be considered as shimmering and violent vitality of matter(ial).
Ancient Romans referred to an untouched, unremoved from its bedrock, natural stone as vivum saxum (a living rock), while detached material, that was not yet incorporated in any project, was called vivus lapis (a living stone). As we see, an obvious current of life flows through it. When the stone was quarried, cut, shaped, carved or otherwise touched by human hand, it became opus (work, as in opus quadrantum for square shaped masonry blocks). We might not necessarily follow the Roman though of stone losing its vitality after being fully taken into human use. Marble statues were being worshiped, desired and even loved; stone stairs were lifting people up towards spiritual realm; talismans and effigies were cared for at homes as familiars.
There are many intimate ways we connect with stone. It’s not only the marble bodies of classical sculpture, which evoke human flesh yet remain cold and unyielding. It’s also the stones we pick up from the ground – felt through their weight, temperature, texture, and resistance. Walking barefoot on centuries-old staircases, worn smooth by generations of footsteps, or engaging in practices like stone massage, shows how stone mediates bodily experience. Stone is often so appealing because it carries the marks of human use – an imprint of life in a non-life, that interconnects in a weave of vibrancy the material holds.
III. Touching x Tuning
Nineteenth-century scholars first introduced teardrop-shaped stone tools as evidence of human intelligence and design, effectively positioning human culture within a geological framework. Many of these 1.7-million-year-old artifacts show no signs of use, no wear or tear, leading to speculation that they were crafted not solely as tools, but as objects of display, possibly linked to decoration or courtship rituals. Ornament plays crucial role in animal kingdom, be it vibrant colors, patterns and shapes, functioning as a systematic visual pattern tied to survival through sexual reproduction. Similarly, for humans some man-made objects may have been designed to be seen, rather than used. They might’ve been serving as ornaments that signaled beauty, craftsmanship, and genetic fitness of their maker. The aesthetic and affective power sealed within matter(ial) and living within for centuries.
Manufacturing a fine, symmetrical stone tool – an axe, a celt, a chisel – required not only suitable raw materials, such as a peculiar stone and a strong piece of bone, but also proper tools. Whenever I work with stone, in particular marble, and see its reddish veins, a though of material interconnectedness is always there to linger. My tools that cut into marble – chisels of hardened iron – are themselves extracted from stone. And humans used to shape stone with stone before discovering and harnessing metal. Metallurgy simply extended this entanglement using ore to work stone more efficiently. Even today, the sharpest and most precise tools used in the industry are made of stone, such as diamond blades.
When I strike an iron chisel against a brown vein in marble, iron hits on iron. That vein, a fracture within the stone, is made of the same material as the tool its being shaped by. As iron bends and stone cracks, matter is transforming matter guided by human touch.
IV. Tuning x Retrieving
It is well documented on how prehistoric communities carefully selected and arranged man-made objects, such as engraved stones, ritual tools, and symbolic artifacts within spatial or astronomical frameworks. We, the contemporary humans, continue to relate to materials through our own bodies. Properties of any stone – its weight, scale and durability – influences the way we design it. A stone too heavy to move becomes a monument, anchoring memory in place. One light enough to carry becomes a companion – a talisman or a lucky charm.
Such everyday practices reflect on how material objects are not mere tools or passive bystanders, but active agents in maintaining spiritual balance, nurturing kinship of living and the inorganic, commemorating the dead, and connecting the earthly with the cosmic. These reflections echo in my own process of lithic attunement via design. Thus, a stone can be engaged not as inert resource but as an active interlocutor, allowing its stories, surfaces, densities, and resistances to guide perception, affect, and creative response. My lithic attunement unfolds through sensory ethnographic practices: touching, filming, collecting, and dwelling with stone fragments. In this sense, design becomes less an imposition of form, and more of a collaboration with stone’s own temporalities and agencies.
As our Baltic ancestors once chose flat-surfaced stones for ritual purposes, my neighbors picked up a perfectly sized stone from the street right next to the doorway to hold the main doors open. Day after day, the stone became a reliable companion, silently holding the door for daily comfort of a plethora of living beings. Once just common grey rock lying by the curb, it has become a doorstop – a functional object without any change to its shape or appearance. This example reveals how lithic attunement is not confined to quarries, monuments, or ruins, but is woven into the folds of everyday life, where matter’s resistance and reliability quietly shape our routines. Glimpses of matter(ial) activity rooted in both memory and potentiality unfolding right before our eyes.
ntly more sustainable and fair decisions.
V. Retrieving x Reclaiming
Stone fragments seem to multiply around me lately. While visiting quarries and working on marble in different locations throughout Apuan Alps, a collection of different stone fragments traveled back with me. This personal reflection reminds us, that collecting lies close to our gathering eyes and hearts, and deep within our social imagination. Stones seem to draw us in. By choosing what to carry and how to arrange it, we begin to construct narratives and meanings. Lapidaries, after all, were made to contemplate lithic desires. Collecting is not just a personal impulse – it is a complex and multifaceted cultural practice, deeply embedded in human behavior.
The riverbed no longer holds the pebble taken; the mountain is now missing one stone. Such souvenirs activate only after they’ve been removed from their unknowing existence and enter immediate experience. These objects are activated and brought to life through narrative, gesture, or remembrance. This viewpoint directly chimes with my creative practice of collecting reclaimed marble from Lithuania – a domesticated material embedded with collective and political memory. The important context is that Lithuania does not have stone-producing mountains; local dolomite and sandstone are scarce and regionally limited. The marble I collect are fragments reclaimed from interior cladding used in Soviet era public buildings – structures once considered politically significant. Numerous slabs of marble, imported and monumental, now linger in forgotten sites, rubble piles, or decommissioned spaces. Reclaiming them becomes a way of tracing material afterlife and the sedimented layers of history it carries.
Much of the reclaimed marble I managed to collect in Lithuania remains unused today and holds mainly symbolic value. Today’s exotic marbles, even visually, differ from those imported during the Soviet period. Many of these fragments still bear traces of concrete from their former settings, material residues that testify to their architectural past. In some cases, the concrete has become inseparable from the marble surface, a reminder of how these materials were once bonded in producing a socio-architectural narrative. Collecting them thus means tracing not only residues of concrete, but also the everyday networks through which these stones circulate.
Even the afterlife of this specific marble is not only material, but social as well – each fragment carries the stories of how it was acquired, stored, or passed down. Most of these marbles were smuggled from building sites, exchanged in the grey market, then quietly stored, mostly unused or passed down. In our vernacular architecture, such materials feel out of place—aspirational, ornamental residues of a contradictory material history. Once a stolen property of the state, now becoming an unused heritage sold through anonymous online advertisements to be reclaimed. Flickers of matter(ial) vibrancy are yet again claiming their rightful place among their living, breathing and creating counterparties.