Giopato&Coombes' "To the Moon and Back" Collection

At Milan Design Week 2019, lighting duo Giopato&Coombes debuted To The Moon and Back, a collection combining the surreal with the ordinary. The designers describe the concept as ‘aiming for the moon’, as if the lights are treasures collected from an exploratory mission to space and brought back to Earth.

Alongside their signature use of handblown Murano glass, new materials include bone china, oxidized brass, and corroded glass, all developed with innovative LED technology. The three new styles are Milky Way, Moonstone, and Gem, each of which represents a different phase of the conceptual jaunt into outer space.

The moonstone lamp is overall rounded and sculptural, though the bone china isn’t perfectly smooth, leaving subtle lines and edges across the surface. Batturo Murano glass filters emit a mixed lighting flux, with a lunar glow emanating from the body while a brighter light passes through the glass.

The floorlamp version combines an organic bone china and glass shell with a geometric brass structure, adding a little severity to the otherwise innocent-looking form. A version of the Moonstone pendant wax cast in bronze dials this severity up a notch, the metal making the facets even more vivid.

The imaginary tale behind Gem is that of a ‘magic stick’ which attracts stardust particles, crystalizing in random combinations thanks to a ‘lunar magnetism’. Giopato&Coombes made the vision a reality with brass rods and elongated elliptical glass bulbs, clustered in either a linear form, or a vertical bunch. They can be made with either clear glass, or with a white dust coating that enhances the silhouette.

Milky Way combines marble, brass, and Murano glass, with various shapes and structures of the material made to look as if orbiting around one another. Light is emitted from LED’s embedded in a linear bar and a circular ring. Each element looks as if in dialogue with the next, moving toward a final composition.