Ross Gardam, founder of the Melbourne-based practice bearing his name, has launched three new glassware pieces at the prestigious Milan Design Week, including two original collections and a bespoke limited-edition piece. 

Unveiled at Luminescent Duality – the practice’s meticulously designed showcase of lighting pieces – Gardam artfully embodied his studio’s aesthetics-driven ethos through three new product launches. 

From the playful, cloud-like geometry of the Aeris collection to the hushed and tactile warmth of Solace, the new products demonstrate Gardam’s passionate dialogue between craftsmanship and emotional resonance.

Table lamp from the Aeris collection.

The collections combine intricately detailed brass, hand-machined in Melbourne, with mouth-blown glass by Adelaide artisan Liam Fleming, boldly reflecting the studio’s cross-disciplinary philosophy.

Ross Gardam makes final adjustments to the Luminescent Duality showcase at Milan Design Week.

Australian Design Review speaks with Gardam to delve into the painstaking processes behind the new collection and how he continues to masterfully blur the lines between functional design and artistic expression.

Head in the clouds

Incorporating a wide range of different pieces, the Aeris collection broadly informs a series of modular chandelier pieces and exquisite glass lamps. All of them are superbly refined pieces of design and function, elevating any interior space with their elegant forms.

AE112 series of the Aeris collection chandelier.

The collection as a whole, Gardam says, is “pretty glass-forward in its aesthetic”. Loosely inspired by a childlike sketch of a cloud, Gardam highlights Aeris’ 112 series as the most apparent example of these inspirations. 

Gardam asserts that the universal design language shared between each piece becomes more apparent when interacting directly with the product, in particular, the linear elements within the dual brass rods that scaffold the piece’s sleek form.  

The next collection is Gardam’s Solace, which resembles a jewelled necklace – or, as Gardam says, “looks like a glass tear, depending on from what perspective you’re looking at the piece”.

Mouth-blown by Fleming, with whom Gardam has worked for more than a decade, the Solace glasspieces comprise an overhead pendant fixture and a desk lamp. 

Pendant chandelier of the new Solace collection.

“One of the points of differentiation with Solace is, because of the shape of the piece, the mouth-blown process is a little bit different,” explains Gardam. “We use a cast iron mould, and there’s no rotation when it’s blown into the mould, so you get a beautiful glass-chilling effect on the surface. It’s become part of the personality of the product.”

The final glass piece, Relic, is distinct for a variety of reasons, beyond its limited-edition production numbers. The beguiling, moody form of this unique piece resulted from a collaboration with Western Australian glass artist Peter Kovacsy, with whom Gardam first partnered on Vestige, a limited-edition product launch, in 2023. 

Ross Gardam’s Luminescent Duality showcase at Milan Design Week.

The first piece was restricted to just five units, whereas Relic doubles that limited volume. The limited number of pieces reflects a production process that was – and remains – incredibly labour-intensive.

“The material use is very high,” Gardam says. “For instance, Vestige uses 40 kilograms of glass; Relic is just under 20. They’re quite special objects – Peter works really hard on a double-mould process to create them. The glass is released, is melted in a kiln, [transferred] into the mould and then anneals for about 14 days.”

Exquisite handcrafted pieces of the new Relic limited edition product launch.

The piece is then carefully removed from a plaster mould and essentially excavated, delicately chipping away at the glass face to reveal the final form before an extensive period of surface polishing. In all, up to five millimetres of glass is removed from the surface in this final polishing phase. 

“There’s a long process involved in each piece,” Gardam explains. 

A place on the world design stage 

Marking the fifth time the studio has presented at Milan Design Week, and the second time Gardam has shepherded a large-format solo show, Luminescent Duality follows the 2023 outing Transcendence. 

Both solo events took place in Brera, a district of Milan esteemed for its arts and cultural scene. This year’s showcase took place on Via Palermo, just across the road from an Hermès exhibition.

Table lamp from the Solace collection, available in two contrasting shades.

“It’s a very well-known street,” Gardam reports. “The site we took is affectionately called ‘the icehouse’ by locals. It was used as storage for ice, pre-refrigeration. It’s a site that I’ve visited continually for over a decade to see shows, so I was very familiar with the space and really excited to present work there this year.”

The show featured all three new products, including two of the 10 total Relic units, as well as a new Volant wall light that had previously been displayed at Melbourne Design Week. Its presence at Luminescent Duality marked the first time the product had been presented internationally. 

While Gardam was amazed by the location of the latest product launch, he admits there were a number of restrictions imposed by the space. 

“We couldn’t touch the ceiling or the wall,” he says. “So we created a kind of monolithic architectural structure to sit within the space, which allowed the users to flow and move around, and interact with the product.”

Close detail of the new Aeris chandelier.

The show’s overarching ethos was an examination of how users perceive objects in the world around us, and how these perspectives are shaped by individual past experiences. 

Throughout the presentation, Gardam would ask attendees to not only focus on what they perceive within each of the pieces, but why they identified these particular points of interest. 

“It was a really interesting experience,” he says warmly. “A lot of people were slowly walking around, taking it in, and there were a lot of people really engaged with some great conversations. It was a fun show to put on.”

As the practice’s creative director – his name is literally above the door when he steps into work each day – Gardam admits that the design philosophy of the studio and his own personal ethos are one and the same. 

The space that sits between objects and people represents a large part of his aesthetic focus, and the curation of that space in the service of meaningful experiences drives much of his artistic output. 

Ross Gardam’s Relic.

“That’s the gist of what we do in the office,” he says. “Aesthetically, that’s for others to perceive. I will say there is a thread that runs between the work, but it’s more natural than something I labour on.”

The full range of lighting fixtures, accessories and furniture from Ross Gardam studio can be viewed and ordered here. 

Imagery supplied.

Related: 30UNDER30 mentor Ross Gardam on the value of connection.