New Collection by Apparatus

“Defining the particular inspiration for a group of pieces has always been a little elusive – we often find that the inspiration finds the piece after it has been made,” says Gabriel Hendifar, creative director and co-founder of Apparatus. The New York design firm’s new collection epitomises its trademark use of illustrious hand-worn materials imbued with numerous historical and aesthetic references. Previewed during Milan Design Week, the complete range including new lighting and a spectacular resin, lacquer and chrome dining table was unveiled at Collective Design Fair in New York last week.

In particular, the collection draws from “the first thirty years of the twentieth century, a period with a striking progression of ideas about modernity,” Hendifar goes on. “The creative process of the studio is informed by the numerous references and conversations that are floating around as collections start to take shape; conversations that are mostly aesthetic, but also address the larger cultural moment in which we participate.”

These broad-ranging references are tied together by exemplary craftsmanship, with all the pieces hand assembled in their Manhattan studio that also functions as a showroom. “For me, one of the essential parts of designing new collections is imagining the context in which we will present them – the colour and mood of the rooms, how those rooms should make us feel, who lives in them, what they collect, what they wear. In this way, our studio practice has always been intimately tied to an exploration of space,” Hendifar says that they redesign their studio on a yearly basis. “This is an approach very much aligned with the aims of the Weiner Werkstätte and its ideal of a ‘total artwork’ – an environment in which every detail has been consciously considered as an integral part of the whole.”