Luxury SpaFinder Magazine – January/February – 2006

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WHEN HE TALKS ABOUT STONE, DAVID LUSTER BECOMES A LOVER, BEIGE travertine turns his voice into a coo. "We hone it smooth as a baby's bottom," he says, elongating the double o in smooth and making small circles with his fingertips on a polished sample. Limestone elicits his chivalrous side: It's purity." Yellow travertine makes his blood race. It is out of this world," he avers, throwing his head back and widening his eyes. And red travertine? Let's get physical. "I have one that is so awesome," he says, then stops, as though words can not express.

Luster is the head of Advent Design International, a two-year-old venture in an ultra-niche market: custom-made tubs carved from a single five-ton block of stone. Finished, each tub-Luster calls them "soaking baths" – weighs about 1,100 pounds, takes 350 to 400 man-hours to produce, and costs on average $18,000. Large diamond-studded circular saws are used to cut the rock into a block, but most of the effort is lavished on hand-chiseling, carving honing (or smoothing) the stone, and polishing it to a high sheen, if the client so desires. The tubs are made abroad, but exactly where is a state secret. Advent Design currently makes just under 25 baths a year. In a world of faux exclusivity, they are the real thing: a top quality raw material shaped by a craftsman in an arduous process that doesn't lend itself to mass production.

Luster came to his professional passion through his father, who started a ceramic tile trading business when he was 50. "My father got me to cut my hair, go to Italy, and learn ceramic tile and stone production," he recalls. Don't come home until you've learned the language and know the trade," his father admonished.

It sounds like Dad's version of the Marine Corps, and it worked. Luster lived part-time in Italy for 11 years ("I got a little apartment and the cheapest car I could find") and became an Indiana Jones whose quarry was quarries. "My father would call me and say "Go to Mongolia and uncover new sources of stone for us." And so he did, sleeping with his suit on in one hotel room because it was so cold. "I stayed single: I didn't know what TV shows were on; I was going around the world on a cheap air line ticket," he recalls in the tone of a man reminiscing about his golden years. (At 49 he's only just settled down, married, and had a daughter recently.) Among his fondest memories: traveling overland to the high Andes on a bus for 12 hours ("with people who had their chickens with them") to find a particular white marble and a certain brown travertine. I look back and feel so blessed," he says.

Advent Design is a fledgling business, but the word is getting out. Luster recently sold the CEO of a major retailer a tub for what he calls his "lets have fun house." The CEO's wife liked the tub so much that she called and ordered a second one. He also just shipped one to Dave Rea, CEO of Inventiv Software. He came to New York, got in the tub, and said, I want one."

Right now the bathss come in three versions: the oval Verona, the deep-saucer-shaped Ravenna and the round Siena. Everybody wants Ravenna," says Luster, lapsing into lover's timbre. "It's sinuous." But Advent Design tubs are not an off-the –shelf product. "We'll do anything the customer wants," Luster says, and to prove it, he sites a tub that he made to accommodate a client's favorite love-making position. Asked about his fantasy bath, Luster goes off on a G-rated rhapsody about Blue Pearl, a marble from Argentina. It almost glows in the dark" he says.

Not every stone arouses Luster's lust. Granite, he says, is cold and heavy-"good for countertops."  Basalt is "eh" for tubs, fine for sinks. Alabaster is a new frontier.

But travertine, that's the love of his life. Because it holds the heat well, Luster tells clients who order travertine baths that they're getting a hot stone massage in the bargain. His instructions: Fill the bath with boiling-hot water, let the stone steep, drain the tub, and then climb in and plaster yourself to the surface. "This, says Luster triumphantly, "is stone therapy."

- Written by Gary Walther