The boutique hosted live demonstrations of three exacting techniques used to create furniture for the house’s collections
Words by ELIZABETH VARNELL
Giorgio Armani has championed craftsmanship and artistry since launching his eponymous label 50 years ago. His approach to Armani/Casa, his 25-year-old interiors line, is equally reliant on talented artisans. In celebration of the milestones and to give a behind-the-scenes look at the handiwork being produced, Armani has been inviting makers to his stores to display their craft just steps from vignettes of furniture incorporating the finishes and dimensional work they’ve produced. On Thursday, May 15, three Italian craftsmen donned white lab coats at the house’s Los Angeles boutique, and gave live demonstrations — complete with Italian translators — highlighting three techniques used to produce a neoclassical finish on glass shelves incorporating gold leaf, textured table legs, and mother-of-pearl mosaic tables and chairs.
To introduce the line’s Midollino technique, one artisan sat at a table weaving wicker table legs. Starting with the outline of a leg base, he interlaced hazelnut Midollino sticks, softened in water, to create a three-dimensional texture, with each row precisely slotted into place by hand. Slowly, the piece started to form, row by row. Another craftsman, on hand for the evening, introduced his version of Orsini glass, a finish inspired by the green walls and golden stuccos at the neoclassic-style Palazzo Orsini in Milan. Uneven layers of brown, tan, yellow, blue, and black hues hand-painted on the back of tempered extra-clear glass left transparent spaces to be covered with light-catching gold leaf. The technique adorns the shelves of the line’s Virgola bookshelf and the Venus console.
A third artisan, sitting at a table spread with squares and rectangles, demonstrated the house’s shell mosaic technique used for iridescent mother-of-pearl mosaic finishes on the house’s Sofia chair, Vega console, and Camilla desk. Each small piece displayed an outer layer of mother-of-pearl seashell carefully sanded to reveal the iridescent surface beneath. As the artisan sat and glued the precisely cut tesserae tiles, he selected just-right pieces for each row, almost as if playing a slow Tetris game. The irregularity of the shades and pieces made the smoothed, polished, and soon-to-be resin-covered finished composition even more eye-catching.
May 20, 2025
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