A Guide to the Best of Southern California : HIGH STYLE : The 5-Million-Year-Old Desk

CHUNKS OF the planet’s oldest rock are given contemporary incarnations when stoneArt Designs transforms 5-million-year-old granite into strikingly unusual furniture. The company’s four-piece desk, for example, would complement any office interior that draws heavily on natural materials. The lean, angular design communicates a no-nonsense message about the person who sits behind it.

The gray model (pictured, about $9,000) is just one of the color options; each desk claims the individual signature of its earthly component with a variety of colors (grays, brown, black, red or pink), veining and mineral intrusion, limited only by nature’s imagination. It’s composed of a writing surface resting atop two bases--one triangular, the other L-shaped--and comes with a separate mobile workstation that fits beneath it (the piece also can stand alone as a computer table or shelving unit).

The desk is not the only stoneArt design; the firm produces unusual granite furniture for many purposes. All pieces are polished to a maintenance-free finish, and granite, the hardest of the igneous rocks, never fades or discolors and seldom suffers chips or scratches. Like sculpture, each desk is cut from a solid piece of stone. Because each piece is as individual as a thumbprint, the furniture is signed, dated and numbered by the worker who crafted it by hand in Melbourne, Australia.

Figuratively speaking, stoneArt creations are not set in stone. So if you fancy the idea but not the particular execution, the company is equipped and willing to accommodate custom designs.

stoneArt Designs are available at Uniquely Australian, Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; (213) 854-6100. For a stoneArt catalogue, write: stoneArt Designs, 2 Henry Adams St., No.489, San Francisco 94103.