NendoThe custom atelier division of Lasvit, the Czech Republic glass manufacturer, presented a new and extraordinary collaboration with Oki Sato of Japanese Nendo studio, at Milan’s Superstudio in the Tortona District during the Salone di Mobile in April 2012.

The exhibition featured lamps, vases and tables, and was an expansion of the Bohemian Rhapsody project that was presented last year in Milan. Oki Sato had been invited by Superstudio as a special guest. The presence of this celebrated designer helped to raise the profile of Superstudio, the temporary museum for new design.

The 2012 exhibition, entitled Still and Sparkling, represented an innovative next step in Lasvit’s pioneering approach to research and experimentation in hand-blown glass, coupled with Nendo’s vision. Lasvit continues its tradition of superior collaborative partnerships in art and design.

Leon Jakimic, founder and CEO of Lasvit, says: "Lasvit and Nendo’s Oki Sato, one of Japan’s foremost young design stars, have managed to create unique, never-seen-before art pieces. With Lasvit, Oki Sato discovered glass as a material. Together with our master glassblowers, he wonderfully re-imagines glass as the material for his distinctive, minimalist designs."

Oki Sato says: "Working with glass is like working with water. You can never totally control this material, so there is always research, new attempts, risk-taking, testing what is possible. This is extremely stimulating for me as the results always lead to new surprises. With glass you have the chance to obtain unique and matchless pieces."

The new Nendo collection designed for Lasvit combines elegant lightness and minimalism to create practical, beautiful objects with evocative, delicate appeal. Because Lasvit’s glass blowers create each piece individually and because glass is a fluid, changeable medium, no two items are exactly alike.

Each of the five concepts presented at Superstudio explores a different, distinctive approach to glass achieved by the accomplished artisans in the Lasvit workshop in Novy Bor. For Lasvit’s Inhale Lamp, glass blowers form big air bubbles then inhale to produce an unusual shape with negative air pressure. X-Ray vases capitalise on transparency and reflection, two key characteristics of glass, to transform a series of domes within a larger mirrored dome, into a subtle, ever-changing optical effect.

Press lamps in pendant and floor styles rely on light sources tucked into compressed glass tubes to produce soft, organic forms. Innerblow and overflow tables deploy two techniques using metal forms and the flowing quality of molten glass to create smooth and water-like surfaces. Growing vases are whimsical objects in which glass pipes give the illusion of vases blooming out of flowers.