Damaso Mayer: The Material Is the Aesthetic in Stone-and-Metal Design

Estudio Material, founded in 2021 by Mexican designer Damaso Mayer, has shown work across the United States and Europe in the last two years alone — at Forma Madrid 2026, SF Art Fair 2026, Design Week Mexico City 2025, COLLECTIBLE NYC 2025 and Milan Design Week 2025. Its pieces pair jagged raw stone with precision-finished metal, and the studio's position is unambiguous: the aesthetic is the material itself.

Mayer grew up between two worlds in Mexico — an organic farm run by his mother and his father's metal gasket factory, which he visited frequently. He earned a BFA in industrial design and product development from CEDIM in Monterrey, a master's in architecture from California College of the Arts in 2016, and then worked as a landscape architect in San Francisco before opening his independent practice.

How does he design against polarisation?

Speaking to STIRworld, Mayer described contemporary design as split: industrial work goes minimalist and geometric, natural work stays single-material, and when they combine, one language dominates while the other supplies structure or ornament. His countermove is conceptual parity. "I try to give every element the same conceptual weight," he said. In the Flat Metals collection, hardware is deliberate and visible — a highlight of the piece rather than something hidden.

"I don't want to say less is more, because it doesn't have to be," he said. "The aesthetic is the material itself. The intention is for stone and metal to coexist in harmony, each appreciated for what it is."

His process starts with observation. With the stone pieces, the material comes first: he often sees a stone and knows he wants to work with it before knowing what it will become. Then he adjusts the idea to the material, never the other way round. He traces this habit to a childhood spent exploring a ranch alone and, later, skateboarding — "a six-inch curb, a two-foot drop, a rail: these are very basic conditions, and it's up to you how you approach them." The longer you look at something, he said, the more it takes you in different directions.

What happens to the waste?

The Fragments series works with residue: offcuts and leftovers from other fabrication. Mayer acknowledges a screening process — many offcuts lack the size or structural integrity to become furniture, and that rules out a share before aesthetics enter — but selection does not stop at the first cut. The Luz series is made from what remains of Fragments pieces. Leftovers from Luz stay in the studio: boxes of limestone, onyx and black basalt slivers wait for future projects. "If I bring a material into the studio, it's because I see potential in it, and I don't believe it needs to go to waste," he said.

Function, for Mayer, stays minimal. Industrial design training taught him to reduce objects to pure function — a table is a flat surface at usable height, nothing more — and that reduction frees him from over-decoration. Stone, he argues, is already decorated; he keeps it rough, tumbled, sometimes broken, exactly as found, which is what gives the work its emotional resonance. He admits the resonance matters more to him than extended functionality.

What is he building next?

Mayer sees no real dearth in the industry — platforms and galleries make design more accessible than ever. What may be lost is customisation: many larger Estudio Material pieces are developed with a specific client and space, "a relationship rather than a transaction." The cost is time on both sides.

Two directions follow. The first applies human artefacts — everyday systems and gestures — onto nature, starting with the Jefferson grid, the land subdivision system laid across the United States. His Absence piece tested how a gridded assembly alters a boulder; he sees it growing into a larger collection. The second treats place, landscape, furnishings and sculpture within a single project, shifting focus from the object to the atmosphere around it.