Incollect Magazine - Issue 8

Incollect Magazine 41 Sinuous furniture, statuesque lighting, and sensuous sculptures define the creations of the family team of father Michele and his twin son and daughter Domenico and Martina Ghiro, known as Ghiró Studio. Incollect sat down with the family to explore how they are setting themselves apart by melding inventive ideas with traditional techniques and craftsmanship. Congratulations on your new showroom on the 10th floor in the New York Design Center. What made you decide to have a showroom in New York? We knew about the NYDC at 200 Lexington Avenue because design dealer Paul Donzella, who showed our work in New York, moved his gallery into that building and we went to visit him several times. When we learned about the possibility of having our own gallery space on the 10th floor we immediately decided to have a showroom that was ours alone and to be part of Incollect. Given the rarity and the particularity of our artisanal work in glass, we thought it would be best to establish direct relationships with interior designers and clients. How has this worked out for you? Very well, thank you. We opened our showroom on September 19, 2023, and have received a number of orders and commissions for customized products. We are very happy and are sure we made the right choice. Do you have showrooms elsewhere or work through dealers internationally? Our headquarters is in Milan where we have both our workshop and a public showroom. We also sell items internationally through retailers, in particular gallerists including, in America, Paul Donzella and Van den Akker, and in Europe, Gallery 88 in London. We have also worked with Incollect dealers such as Lost City Arts in New York and Charles Burnand in London. What is your best-selling design? Among our best-selling pieces are the ‘Martina’ mirror, the ‘Amber Eye’ sculpture, and the ‘Conchiglia’ wall sconces. But there are many popular pieces. How is your work different from other contemporary artisanal Italian glassmakers? We differ from other artisanal glassmakers for several reasons. Firstly, because we work with machinery and tools from the 1950s, and some even from the late 1940s, to shape, grind, and polish glass to different degrees. This type of machinery allows us to employ traditional techniques that rely entirely on manual skills, leaving far more room for individual creativity and skill in what we do. Today, new machinery and tools for glass are designed to be more precise and faster, leaving a lot less room for artisanal creativity and art.