Milan Design Week 2026: Gallotti & Radice’s ‘Glass Tales’

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 ample native timber and generations of specialized craftsmen, the district had change into one among Italy‘s foremost centres of furnishings manufacturing. As such, beginning a furnishings model was not, in concept, a radical concept. What was radical was the trail that they selected: to create an organization primarily based on objects wrought virtually completely in glass.

Gallotti & Radice first operated as a small workshop, producing lighting, mirrors and ornamental objects solely by hand, earlier than increasing its industrial capabilities to supplies comparable to 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.

Going down 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 material and passementerie threaded with uncooked items of reclaimed glass,’ says Dries. ‘It can really feel fairly treasured, however, on the identical 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 solely from glass. ‘On the time, they’d invented new methods of fusing glass,’ explains Dries, who will show an unique 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 technique of becoming a member of panes of glass with a easy chrome steel joint, enabling bigger and extra structurally advanced items, such because the ‘T35 Trio’ – a three-part espresso desk set designed by Pierangelo Gallotti in 1975 – now offered in an anniversary version in bronze-tinted tempered glass and brushed silver travertine.

For the part devoted to the current, the model will present picks from the 2026 catalogue, together with out of doors furnishings by the Milan-based duo David/Nicolas. The corporate will even current its newest items at Salone del Cell, 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, offered within the exhibition’s last chapter, that illustrates the creative potential of the fabric. ‘We requested every designer to include their very own tradition into the work,’ says Gallotti. ‘These items actually 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 way of 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 an alternate model clad in shimmering aluminium leaf. Shibata labored with tempered extra-light glass, delicately shading its floor by hand into tender gradients of chestnut, pink or yellow. Shodeinde composed a console from thick glass panels that fade steadily 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 remains to be achieved by hand,’ says Dries, whose set up will even function different archive treasures, together with unique drawings from the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies. ‘To search 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.’