A conversation with Sergio Costa

From its base in the city of Vila Nova de Gaia, Portuguese design brand MAAMI HOME shapes marble into decorative accents and furniture for living spaces. MAAMI was founded by Sérgio Costa in 2016 and re-launched in 2020. A scion of Portuguese company TCC Whitestone, Costa was eager to create a brand that would showcase his family’s generational craftsmanship expertise across carpentry, design and metalwork.

Sergio Costa

For decades, from their industrial factory in Vila Nova de Gaia, they had been sourcing soft stones that were cut, polished and transformed into decorative pieces and furniture for local and international clients alike. For Costa, it was time to tap into this wealth of experience to establish an in-house design brand that combined innovative technology with artisanal know-how.  “I felt it was very important for our family business to create its own brand, so that we could showcase the quality of our production while using marble as our ‘centrepiece’ material for all of our collections.” 

Crafting products as diverse as fragrance diffusers and lamps, MAAMI impeccably transforms the heaviness of marble into an expression of raw lightness. 

It is Costa’s desire for each product that bears the MAAMI mark to remain a part of a client’s world for life, striving as far as possible to offer pieces that are not only of impeccable design, but above all, of impeccable quality. “We seek to craft items that are timeless, that are bought with an intention and an appreciation for design that transcends time and not bought just for the sake of being bought.”

Each choice that is made throughout the design and creation process is guided by the principle that there is no room for superficiality – only for purpose and practicality.

While MAAMI sources its high-quality marble from quarries across Greece, Italy and Portugal, it looks to incorporate waste marble that is ordinarily discarded post-production. For Costa, the reuse of materials to create eye-catching, pared back designs with ancient techniques of Portuguese craftsmanship has become MAAMI’s main objective. “The big plans are to use the most that we can from all the marble waste we are able to collect,” he says. “There is a large part of if that is so precious and rare, that it absolutely needs to be used – even if used in its natural, unpolished state, just as it is.”