This Milan Design Week exhibition does extraordinary issues with glass

‘I by no means thought the phrase fragile had destructive connotations,’ says the curator Valentina Ciuffi, founding father of the artistic observe Studio Vedèt and the thoughts behind ‘The Romance of Fragility’, the most recent exhibition by Delvis (Un)Restricted, debuting throughout Milan Design Week 2026. Bringing collectively the work of six designers and design studios – Acquainted Type, Serim Kwack, Johan Pertl, Inderjeet Sandhu, Tino Seubert and Maria Tyakina – the present explores the formal limits of glass. ‘To me, one thing that’s fragile is one thing you handle,’ Ciuffi provides. ‘It’s one thing that requires consideration.’

Uncover Delvis (Un)Restricted at Milan Design Week

For the exhibition, Ciuffi chosen works with a intentionally broad materials expression, from items that resemble strong supplies resembling stone to others that have interaction extra instantly with the economic language of glass.

Prague-based Johan Pertl, as an illustration, attracts on the gradual processes of pure land formations. His ‘Erosion’ aspect desk takes cues from the decay of coastlines, with translucent, pink-tinged glass cascading from a white marble plinth, like water step by step carrying away rock. ‘It seems as if it comes from one other planet,’ Ciuffi notes.

Elsewhere, glass turns into a vessel for reminiscence. Acquainted Type – based by Myeonga Web optimization and Marie Kolářová – revisits the vanishing custom of Bohemian reduce glass, as soon as a staple in Czech properties. Working with craftspeople from the Šumava mountains, the duo repurpose leftover sheet glass right into a sequence of nesting vases, hand-cutting conventional patterns utilizing a diamond grindstone.

The exhibition additionally pushes past useful typologies. The work of Korean designer Serim Kwack, Ciuffi says, ‘is sort of a portray, or a wall hanging’. Utilizing discovered industrial glass panes, Kwack creates refined imprints of on a regular basis objects – headphones, keyboards and different home gadgets – leading to ghostly traces suspended throughout the floor.

For Ciuffi, glass is greater than a cloth outlined by transparency and perceived delicacy. It turns into a lens by way of which to look at our relationship with collectible design itself. ‘Numerous the time, collectible design objects are handled as in the event that they’re fragile, even when they’re not,’ she says. ‘They appeal to this sure perspective of care about them.’

In line with Ciuffi, this mission marks the start of a broader analysis into fragility. ‘I’d prefer to work with different supplies, like paper, or discover the concept of steadiness and equilibrium,’ she continues. ‘However it’s at all times the identical questions: how will we handle these objects? And the way do they inhabit our properties?’