Giopato & Coombes

On the Milan Design Week from 6 to 12 June 2022, Giopato & Coombespresents the new Maehwacollection with the site-specific installation Into the Bloom, set up in the permanent exhibition space in the heart of Milan, the Giopato & Coombes Galleryin via san Maurilio 19.

Maehwais the Korean word for plum blossom.

The project draws inspiration from a moment Cristiana and Christopher, the designers founders of Giopato & Coombes, experienced when they were in a park in Seoul.

To recall this inspiration, Cristiana and Christopher say:

Each of us has experienced, in our lifetime, a sensation that words cannot grasp. It’s when we hold our breath lost in a whirlwind of events, and, all of a sudden, we perceive an inner calm, born from a pure connection with nature. In a park in Seoul, we found ourselves in an emotional turmoil for what was happening around us, and suddenly, we remained suspended for a moment. People of all ages, together with us, were turning their heads up to gaze at the plum blossoms, with their open corolla or with small spherical buds still closed, waiting for them to vibrate in the breeze. In the natural inspiration, the leafy branches laden with blossoms were filling the space creating their own composition, and this guided us in designing the compositional structure of the Maehwa collection.

The Maehwaproject develops on the relationship between nature and abstraction, searching for a compositional balance between the elements, playing with extension and presence across space.

Maehwa lamps’ composition reveals a tridimensional sinuosity, where glass bubbles with their organic sphericity follow one another. Each sphere embraces the light source, supported by a cable that flexes slightly, like a pistil protected by a corolla not bloomed yet.

The same feeling of softness can be found in the lighting modulation. The glass of the spheres, hand-blown with “a lume” technique, modulates the light from the source, thanks to its surface as with a glace icing-like effect.

Through the site-specific installation Into the Bloom, Giopato & Coombes evokes that moment of ephemeral wonder, combining standard compositions and custom-made creations, to underline the wide possibilities of product customization, one of the key features of Giopato & Coombes’ design approach.