The Giopato & Coombes brand went in search of the perfect glass, making products of high quality craftsmanship and refined technique
Giopato & Coombes are a design duo, two designers “in love with making.” Cristiana Giopato and Christopher Coombes are an architect and a designer, she Italian and he British. Working together they create a multidisciplinary team that is the basis of their creative fuel. Different worldviews, given by different personalities, together generate outstandingly beautiful, internationally recognized projects.
Two definitely interesting artistic personalities with strong creativity. When asked, “What do you like most about being a designer?” she, “I really like the combination of the instinctive/intuitive/irrational approach of the creative act and the pragmatism necessary for a design to become an industrial product. it’s a constant precarious balance.”; and he, “Other than arguing with my wife? I really like the path to concreteness. It is not linear unfortunately, but it is based on many small decisions among a thousand ideas and thoughts. I like to force the mind to build the work to the best of its ability, to combine interweaving benefits among all the elements of the project, eliminating a sense of design layering.”
It is from their differences in creating and working that come the creations of the products that have made them world famous, leading them to collaborations of the caliber of Kenzo, Design Within Reach, Fiam Italia, Living Divani and many others…
One of their most famous creations are “
The flutes
“, Murano glass lamps that stand on the thin line dividing past and future. Recalling lamps with an ancient flavor, the shapes of the Flutes are strikingly modern, managing to combine centuries-old tradition with contemporary technology.
Speaking about the experience that led to the creation of the Flutes, the designer says, “Arriving in Murano via boat, docking at Fondamenta dei Vetrai and beginning to wander from one calle to another, looking for the right “breath” that was in line with the project I kept in my bag. The colors of the houses, the colors of the sky on the first sunny day after so much rain, the warmth of the people, at first a bit shy and then very generous; the reminder of my origins, the memories of the ancient and modern glass that have accompanied me since childhood. Then the meeting with the right people, and the exchange of ideas between designer and master glassmaker.”
Meticulous work then, based on the search for the perfect breath that could give life to the hitherto only imagined work, this is modus operandi of the architect couple.
Each lamp is necessarily handcrafted using high quality craftsmanship processes. The flavor of the cities of Venice, through the hands of Murano artisans, comes to life in these lamps, with the colors recalling the sunset over the lagoon. The LED light positioned inside the lamps is deliberately designed to illuminate both upward and downward; this particular strategy brings out the glass workmanship of the lamp itself, putting it at the center of the product.
Another extraordinary creation by the duo Giopato and Coombes is the lamp series “
Bubbles
“. In this creation we find blown glass bubbles with a light inside. The metaphor of the lightness of light is evident and well articulated in this lamp series with a magical and mysterious flavor.
The architect tells how the idea for this lamp was born: “For a few seconds, in front of our eyes, we were surrounded by a multitude of soap bubbles. It was a magical moment, and their formal simplicity was beautiful and immediate: we wanted to crystallize this moment, when the bubbles grow more and more until they touch, and then explode! There, that was the start. The lightness of soap bubbles became for us a metaphor for the insubstantiality of light.”
This project marks a continuation of the research on glassmaking that began with the series the Flutes. Bolle is also made by master craftsmen from Veneto who are able to use the “lume” technique that allows the glass spheres to mount on each other. The internal LED light, placed on a specially designed brass stand, makes it possible to create a soft light that not only illuminates the room but also brings out the characteristics of the glass, the true protagonist of the work.
