I’ve written here about how different types of stone is useful for different types of projects, with marble being the king and queen of sculptor’s stones. However, you can’t just say “marble” because there are so many variants of this stone as well. Check out this graph for a list of popular marbles that are used in many different capacities.
http://www.findstone.com/daniel5.htm
Oftentimes, marble is used for countertops, sinks, flooring, and other such uses – not for sculpture, and certainly not for the types of literalist sculptures that I do, as opposed to figurative pieces. Carrara Bianco marble is particularly popular, and particularly beautiful, and I’m currently using it to sculpt a pair of boxing gloves. It’s a challenge to get the roundness of the gloves, the creases, and the laces, but the challenge is what makes the end result so satisfying.
When selecting a marble you want to look into its compressive strength, water absorption, and density. Issues of the grain size is very important when doing very detailed realistic work. you want to be able to make fine creases. Also I consider how the stone will stain, if I chose to stain the piece. Different stones takes the stain differently. This way I have total control of how the finished sculpture will come out and the feeling the views will feel while view the piece.
