Italian Marble Kitchens for New York and the East Coast

Michelessi SRL is an artisan marble workshop in Aprilia, on the Via Pontina between Rome and Latina. We have been working stone here since 1976: half a century of worktops, islands, bathrooms, fireplaces, staircases and floors, drawn in our own technical office and built by our own hands. We are not a dealer and we do not sell from a catalogue: every kitchen that leaves Aprilia was designed for one room, cut from slabs chosen one by one and finished by artisans who have known marble all their lives.

This page is written for homeowners, architects and interior designers in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island and Boston who want a marble kitchen genuinely built in Italy: it explains how we work for them.

A marble kitchen is not a product picked from a shelf; it is a piece of architecture cut to the millimetre. Three things distinguish what we make.

• Slabs chosen one by one. Calacatta, Statuario, Bianco Carrara, Nero Marquina, travertine, onyx: we select each slab in person, decide how the veining will run across the island and down its sides, and photograph it in full for your approval before it is cut.
• Numerically controlled cutting, hand finishing. Our cutting centres are numerically controlled, so that a worktop arrives with its sink cut-out, hob opening and tap holes already in place; edges, joints and the final polish are finished by hand. Typical worktop thicknesses are 2 and 3 centimetres.
• Made in Italy in the literal sense. Design, cutting, finishing and dry assembly all happen in Aprilia. What you approve in the drawing is what comes out of the crate on the other side of the Atlantic.

Our indoor marble kitchens are fully bespoke, from a single drawing, or built around our modular kitchens with worktops in marble, Dekton, Fenix or quartz. For garden and terrace there are the outdoor kitchens in marble and stone.

Every project for the East Coast follows four steps, described in full on our page on Italian marble kitchens worldwide.

Measurements

We ask for photographs of the room, hand-drawn measurements of the walls, and the position of windows, sockets, drains and the appliances you have chosen. Measurements may come in inches: we convert them and work in millimetres. If an architect or contractor is working on site, we receive their drawings directly; where the project calls for it, the final measurements are checked again by our own team before cutting.

The 3D design

From the measurements comes the 3D design: the finished kitchen set within your room, with the layout of the units, the finishes and the veining of the chosen slab. You review it at leisure, refine it with us over a video call and approve it before the stone is touched.

Samples delivered to your door

The colour of a marble cannot be judged on a screen, least of all under New York light, which is not the light of Lazio. We therefore send samples of the stones and finishes under consideration, to be compared in your own room against your floors, your joinery and your windows.

Video calls with the workshop

Over a video call we show you the slabs available, the chosen slab before cutting, the work in progress and, where the project allows, the kitchen dry-assembled in Aprilia before packing.

Marble is heavy and, in its thinner sections, fragile. Every element is therefore packed in the workshop once finished: pieces protected individually, stood upright or laid flat according to their shape, braced in crates built to the size of the load and numbered in the order of installation. The means of transport, the schedule and the formalities are defined in the quotation, according to the destination and to the access to the building.

Installation is carried out by our own team: the same artisans who followed the work in Aprilia travel with their tools, verify the measurements on site, level the worktops, close the joints along the veining and hand over a kitchen ready for use. Where a local contractor is involved, we coordinate them with working drawings and the assembly sequence, and cut-outs are drawn around the appliances you have chosen locally. Our project abroad has a name, Dubai: bespoke interiors and outdoor kitchens in marble, natural stone, wood and steel, made in Aprilia and installed by our own artisans.

Between New York and Boston a house lives through hot, humid summers and winters well below freezing; along Long Island and the Jersey shore it also breathes salt air. Indoors this changes little: the choice between marble, quartz, Dekton and Fenix depends on how you cook and how much patina you are prepared to love. Marble is calcium carbonate: it reacts to lemon, wine and vinegar and calls for a sealer, in exchange for a beauty nothing else can imitate; quartz and sintered stone are more forgiving.

Outdoors the climate decides. Granite, true quartzite and sintered stone stand up to frost, rain, sun and salt with very little upkeep; marble is used honed and sealed, on serving surfaces and side panels rather than where the lemon is cut. By the sea the working parts, sink bowls, grills and drawers, are in grade 316 stainless steel. Our guide on which stone to choose for an outdoor kitchen compares them one by one.

A roof terrace in Brooklyn, a garden in Westchester, a house in the Hamptons: wherever there is open air and a table, an outdoor kitchen makes sense. We design them with an island in granite, quartzite or sintered stone, a sink, burners, a wood-fired or gas oven and a barbecue, drawn together in a single 3D project. For the barbecue and the oven themselves we use refractory stone, the very material bread ovens are made of, and never cement or masonry: under thermal shock and winter frost the inner structure of cement deteriorates and after a few years it starts to give way. Our refractory stone barbecues and outdoor kitchens are available as ready models or configured to measure for your space.

Among the visions from our drawing board there is one for Manhattan: a penthouse above Central Park, with a monumental fireplace in Nero Marquina, a sculptural island in Calacatta Oro and a Roman travertine floor that gathers the setting sun. It is a design exercise, not a delivered commission: it shows how we imagine Aprilia stone at the top of the city. You will find it on the page devoted to the New York vision.

A photograph of the space, hand-drawn measurements and an idea are enough. Write to info@michelessi.it or on WhatsApp, in English or Italian: you will receive a first assessment, then the 3D design and a quotation with production time, transport and installation defined for your address. Since 1976 our marble has left Aprilia for homes in Italy and abroad; the Atlantic is only a longer road. Contact us.