The Woman Behind The Stone | Meet Maryse, Natural Stone Consultant | Stonari
Stonari is a natural stone advisory and sourcing consultancy practice led by Maryse UCHINO the Principal Natural Stone Consultant. Working from Réunion Island — at the convergence of the Indian Ocean’s geological, cultural and trade currents — shapes how this practice sees stone. Not as a commodity to be procured, but as a material with its own logic, its own constraints and its own capacity to define what a finished space becomes. That perspective took fifteen years to build. It is what every engagement draws on.
Her practice draws on over end-to-end experience across import-dependent stone markets, spanning design intent validation and feasibility, stone sourcing, international logistics, site coordination and execution oversight. This includes projects across the Caribbean, with contexts such as Saint-Barthélemy, Turks & Caicos and Anguilla, where material selection, logistics and execution conditions mirror those found in other regions facing similar constraints. Those fifteen years built the end-to-end fluency that allows Stonari to speak every language in the stone supply chain: design, technical, logistical, contractual.
The practice was built on one reflex: identify the point of exposure before it becomes visible to everyone else.
That reflex was formed in logistically fragile environments — where the margin between a good stone decision and a costly one was measured in days, not months. No local correction capacity. No second shipment window. No room for optimism about lead times that did not hold. The first discipline those environments teach is this: name the risk before the project does.
Those conditions do not leave you. They become operational memory — the kind that activates before the question is even formed.
The practice serves ultra-luxury residential projects and boutique hospitality developments, with a deliberate upstream positioning — engaging before stone specifications, contracts and logistics lock projects into irreversible paths. This is the only point in a project where stone expertise can prevent a crisis rather than manage one.
Stonari holds no commercial agreements with suppliers, no supplier pays to be recommended, no inventory to move, no quota to meet. Technical performance, material quality and logistical reliability drive every recommendation. Nothing else does.
Working languages: English and French. Also speaks Japanese and Spanish.
Stonari holds membership in the Natural Stone Institute and serves on its Women in Stone Mentorship Committee — active involvement in the profession that natural stone advisory serves.