us

About us

Marble’us arose from a great love of nature and an unbridled passion for other cultures. Family ties with the wonderful country of Albania and our technical material expertise led us to the discovery of remarkable marble quarries in Deja, located in the district of Mat.

As inquisitive people, we are always interested in a unique story, and it is this inspiring story that we want to share with you, in its every layer and facet.

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Country and culture

Albania is located in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. With the exception of the Adriatic coast, the country is rugged and mountainous. Over a third of the country consists of forests and marshes, while another good third is grassland, and only about a fifth is cultivated.

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Our quarry valley near the fascinating Saint Elijah’s Creek

Perroi i Shlliut, the name of the place where our marble quarry is located, means “Saint Elijah’s Creek”. Elijah is one of the most important prophets in the Book of Kings in the Old Testament. In the ninth century BC, he foretold that Yahweh would cause a great drought as punishment for the worship of idols. When the idolatry persisted and nobody repented, Elijah concealed himself by a stream named Cherith, where Yahweh sent ravens to bring him food and water from the stream every morning and evening (1 Kings 17:2-7).

Local residents told us that there used to be a church in the area. Professor Albert Riska, who teaches at Alexander Xhuvani University in Elbasan, publishes academic articles on the connection between place names, saints and the history of Christianity in Albania. He confirms that it should be possible to find archaeological remains of a church in the area.
This means that our quarry is the site of ancient traces of history, which are collected and embedded in the layers of stone, and which fire the imagination. That makes our marble one-of-a-kind.

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Discovery of a new type of marble

As we were walking along the edge of the road, a block of stone caught our eye. The piece of stone we saw was a breccia. (the plural is breccie) This sort of stone is composed of older, irregular stone fragments brought together by various geological processes, including avalanches, volcanic eruptions, mudslides and landslides. The breccia that we held in our hands exhibited a wonderful pattern with remarkable colour gradations. Being familiar with the region, we knew that it should be possible to find more of this sort of marble. We also realised that this block of stone – an agglomeration of other valuable sorts of stone – deserved closer examination. That led to a thorough scientific study, in cooperation with geologists, of the origin and features of the stone. We discovered that what we had was a tectonic breccia, which is formed when stones are crushed along fault lines in the earth’s crust and subsequently bonded together by cementation. The result is a sort of “petrified time”: centuries and millennia compressed into an indestructible material of timeless beauty. Some of the stone fragments are over 130 million years old – making every stone a journey through time.

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The search for a name

It was not easy to choose a name for a stone with so many facets. Ultimately we wanted to capture the rural atmosphere, the rugged landscape, and the dynamic nature of the stone. After extensive brainstorming, we decided that we should name the stone after the place where it is quarried: Deja. Deja stands for the mountain range, as well as the proud tradition of the village in the Mat district, testifying to millennia of nature and culture. And so Breccia Deja was born. The marble was quarried and processed in 2016 for the very first time.