Luke Edward Hall teams up with Buccellati for a surreal, mythical experience in Milan.
The installation Aquae Mirabiles by Buccellati transforms the brand’s new Caviar Collection and silverware pieces into an immersive, underwater-inspired world. Created with Luke Edward Hall and Balich Wonder Studio, the project takes over rooms next to Buccellati’s historic headquarters at Piazza Tomasi di Lampedusa in Milan. The space is staged like a submerged environment, where objects appear as if discovered within a marine landscape rather than placed on display.
The presentation highlights Buccellati’s craftsmanship through its signature use of spherical forms, a recurring design code in the maison’s history. Alongside new works, references to archival pieces reinforce a continuity between past and present, one that was met with wonder in Milan.
Building on a language of elegance and refinement, Andrea Buccellati designed a complete mise en place dedicated to caviar, including cutlery, serving trays, bowls, plates, ice buckets, Murano glassware and flutes. The table setting extends into a fully imagined universe where craftsmanship becomes scenography.
Within this setting, Luke Edward Hall envisions the guests as “mermaids and sea myths, magical creatures of a realm who find in the depths of the ocean the springtime grace of a Renaissance garden.” The result is a banquet that operates as both object display and narrative world, where decorative arts, mythology and table culture converge.
In the first of the two rooms, silver sturgeons seem to glide through the shadows, catching the light like faint flashes beneath deep water. In the next space, walls painted in soft watercolour tones surround a table shaped as if by a current, where the Caviar Collection is presented as the focal point of Aquae Mirabiles. As Maria Cristina Buccellati explains, the project “unveils the Italian roots of the history of caviar,” a delicacy already appreciated in Roman times. The narrative also recalls a historical reference from 1491, when Leonardo da Vinci is said to have offered caviar to Beatrice d’Este on the occasion of her marriage to Ludovico il Moro.
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