A masterclass in glass furnishings awaits at this Milan Design Week showcase

When Pierangelo Gallotti and Luigi Radice based their namesake agency within the coronary heart of Brianza in 1955, the densely industrialised area between Milan and Como was already a hub of carpentry. Supported by considerable native timber and generations of specialized craftsmen, the district had develop into considered one of Italy’s foremost centres of furnishings manufacturing. As such, beginning a furnishings model was not, in idea, a radical thought. What was radical was the trail that they selected: to create an organization based mostly on objects wrought nearly completely in glass.

Gallotti & Radice first operated as a small workshop, producing lighting, mirrors and ornamental objects totally by hand, earlier than increasing its industrial capabilities to supplies reminiscent of steel and fabric. But its spirit of artisanal experimentation by no means pale.

Now in its seventieth yr, the model marks the milestone with ‘Tales in Glass’, an exhibition that may culminate in a bunch present that includes new work by a world cohort of feminine designers, together with the LA- and Uruguay-based Estudio Persona; London’s Miminat Shodeinde; Milan’s Valentina Cameranesi Sgroi; Belgian-Dutch designer Ivania Carpio; Tokyo’s Fumie Shibata; and the Dubai- and Montreal-based Rania Hamed.

Happening within the historic Palazzo Meli Lupi di Soragna, the exhibition ‘tells a narrative in three chapters’, says Silvia Gallotti, the model’s second-generation CEO and artistic director. The narrative lives inside an immersive set up designed by Parisian architect Sophie Dries. ‘The scenography is impressed by crystal, so we’re wrapping the partitions with cloth and passementerie threaded with uncooked items of reclaimed glass,’ says Dries. ‘It’s going to really feel fairly treasured, however, on the similar time, the motion may be very dramatic.’

Guests will first encounter the corporate’s earliest creations, for which Dries and Gallotti spent months recovering archive items from auctions and classic sellers. Amongst them is the 1971 ‘Adam’ desk – a clear slab set on curved legs – extensively thought of the primary desk made totally from glass. ‘On the time, that they had invented new methods of fusing glass,’ explains Dries, who will show an authentic version alongside a brand new model she has reinterpreted in a hotter bronze-tinted end.

The Nineteen Seventies marked a turning level for the model, because it developed a way of becoming a member of panes of glass with a easy chrome steel joint, enabling bigger and extra structurally complicated items, such because the ‘T35 Trio’ – a three-part espresso desk set designed by Pierangelo Gallotti in 1975 – now introduced in an anniversary version in bronze-tinted tempered glass and brushed silver travertine.

For the part devoted to the current, the model will present choices from the 2026 catalogue, together with out of doors furnishings by the Milan-based duo David/Nicolas. The corporate may also current its newest items at Salone del Cellular, the place Gallotti & Radice will launch new work by Studiopepe, Federica Biasi, and a collaboration between Francesco Meda and David López Quincoces.

But it’s the newest era of designers, introduced within the exhibition’s remaining chapter, that illustrates the inventive potential of the fabric. ‘We requested every designer to include their very own tradition into the work,’ says Gallotti. ‘These items really inform a narrative – each of the designer’s background and of the craftsmanship that Gallotti & Radice has cultivated over the previous 70 years.’

The brand new commissions discover glass by a spread of artisanal finishes that Gallotti & Radice has developed over the a long time. Estudio Persona will current a low desk with a fused amethyst glass prime set on a base in hand-patinated vintage bronze, with another model clad in shimmering aluminium leaf. Shibata labored with tempered extra-light glass, delicately shading its floor by hand into comfortable gradients of chestnut, pink or yellow. Shodeinde composed a console from thick glass panels that fade step by step from deep black to transparency. Cameranesi Sgroi, in the meantime, experimented with fused glass to create a nesting trio of tables with crackled surfaces and shimmering aluminium-leaf finishes.

‘It has been extraordinary to go to the corporate’s workshops and see how a lot of the method continues to be completed by hand,’ says Dries, whose set up may also characteristic different archive treasures, together with authentic drawings from the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies. ‘To seek out this depth of artisanal information nonetheless alive inside a family-run firm is extremely uncommon. It is exactly the explanation their work with glass has endured for therefore lengthy.’