During this year's Milan Design Week, the refined setting of Osanna Visconti's Milan atelier—a space with the atmosphere of an artistic sanctuary—became the backdrop for a remarkable encounter between Japanese textile tradition and the timeless elegance of Italian bronze. Here, Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci, founders of Dimorestudio, composed a sensory narrative in which memory and modernity, artisanal craftsmanship and the poetry of the object found a delicate and compelling balance.
Some encounters in design transcend the notion of collaboration. The meeting of HOSOO, Dimorestudio and Osanna Visconti is one of those rare convergences in which tradition, craftsmanship and contemporary sensibility come together to tell a story of beauty, memory and renewal.
Within Osanna Visconti's atelier, this dialogue assumed a distinctly sculptural form. HOSOO's new Hemispheres Collection, created in collaboration with Dimorestudio, was unveiled in a scenographic dialogue with Osanna Visconti's bronze creations. Conceived by Dimorestudio as a theatrical mise-en-scène, the installation brought together light, material and time in an almost musical composition, where every detail evoked transformation, transition and renewal. It became a stage on which bronze and textile observed, reflected and completed one another.
Within this carefully orchestrated setting, bronze entered into conversation with silk. Osanna Visconti's new Magnolia Collection emerged as a sculptural meditation on the passage of time and the cyclical nature of renewal. Inspired by the life cycle of the magnolia blossom—from the fragile promise of the bud to the full bloom of the flower—the collection transforms bronze into a living, organic language. The Magnolia Sofa evokes the beginning of this journey through the quiet promise of the unopened bud; the mirror captures the fleeting moment of blossoming, while the console embodies the fullness and maturity of the flower at its peak.
Each piece is first modelled by hand in wax before being cast using the ancient lost-wax process—one of the oldest known metalworking techniques, dating back more than 6,000 years—and then meticulously finished in an art foundry. Pieces including the Scottato Stool, Banquette, Bambù Screen, Roccia Ottoman and Magnolia Sofa, upholstered in textiles from the Hemispheres Collection, animate a scenography in which bronze and fabric complement one another in a refined conversation about texture, time and elegance.
The Hemispheres Collection reinterprets more than 20,000 traditional obi patterns preserved within the historic HOSOO family archive. Once monochrome sketches passed down through generations, these motifs have been reimagined through the distinctive lens of Dimorestudio, celebrated for its cinematic, melancholic and deeply emotional aesthetic. Rendered in shades of pearl grey, sepia, smoky blue and muted green, the textiles acquire a distinctly contemporary expression while preserving the delicacy of hand craftsmanship and the quiet spirit of Japanese tradition.
The result is a dialogue between worlds—between Eastern introspection and Italian exuberance, between memory and modernity. Each of the collection's thirty-three textiles bears the imprint of an almost ritualistic level of craftsmanship. Floral motifs, flowing bamboo silhouettes and abstract compositions inspired by the rhythms of nature are transformed into a contemporary expression of balance, refinement and enduring beauty.
osannavisconti.com I www.dimorestudio.eu I www.hosoo.co.jp
Hosoo x Dimorestudio @ Osanna Visconti
Photography by Silvia Rivoltella
Words by Andreea Dicianu
Discover the full version of this story in Volume V.