“As a segment of the marble business, sculpture is dwarfed by the industrial side, which slices slabs by the millions of tons each year. Robots help these companies mill countertops and shower stalls for markets around the world. But fine art sculpture is big business too, worth billions of dollars a year.
The first robot sculptor appeared in Carrara in 2005. Now there are about 30, and the total worldwide is around 100. Two men play outsize roles in this rapidly evolving business. One is Massari, the more evangelistic of the two. His corporate mothership, publicly traded Litix SpA, trumpets Massari’s vision of the future on the first page of a slick marketing brochure. ‘We Don’t Need Another Michelangelo: In Italy, It’s Robots’ Turn to Sculpt,’ proclaims the newspaper headline he reproduced from a New York Times piece on his company.
The other man is a bluff Midwesterner named Jim Durham… He was the biggest producer of fine art stone sculpture in America, and now, with his Franco Cervietti purchase, the world.”
From Bloomberg.