Marble hall in Victoria & Albert Museum London
Marble, Technical advice

Reconstruction of a damaged marble piece at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Process of reconstructing a damaged Neo Marquina marble skirting for the South Wing

Image: Victoria & Albert Museum marble hall, London
In 2019, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London opened it’s new extension and courtyard facing the Exhibitions Road. During the process, we assisted the architectural and the in-house design team with reconstructing a damaged marble skirting board of the museums South wing.
It is a small element in a huge building, but when it comes to the biggest design museum in the world – every detail matters.
The museum was built during the 1890s, as Queen Victoria’s stride towards refinement and progress in Art and Design. The in-house restoration department holds an impressive collection of every material used for the construction and decoration of the museum.
Our client brought to us the damaged piece of the existing marble skirting board to our showroom. They’d requested us to source the matching marble and recreate the replica for restoration.
Details of the damaged black marble piece
We recreated the piece using Nero Marquina, black marble with distinctive white veins. Our brilliant technical team created a drawing of the piece, which was sent to Italy for production.
INOPERA technical section drawing V&A museum
Availabl in bespoke sizes and finishes
Available in all sizes and finishes
Nero Marquina is originally sourced from basque countries and it’s one of the most impressive marbles due to it’s true black colour.
Balvatnik Hall project original terrazzo flooring
Original terrazzo floors in the Buddhist Art corridor, Balvatnik Hall project, V&A
InOpera Group also supplied the custom-made terrazzo floors for the new Balvatnik Hall, restroom and entrance corridor. These parts of the building are subjected to the heaviest of footfalls, therefore a material was needed that was not only complementary to the original building, but also durable enough to withstand the test of time and heavy usage. That’s why cement-based Carrara marble terrazzo with a light-beige base colour was used, due to it’s natural and classical look that complimet the style of the rest of the building.