It’s official: the gleaming brass shades and signature sculptural lighting from Apparatus has – alas! – made its way across the pond. One of the world’s most celebrated lighting and design studios, the upscale New York-based firm has just opened the doors to its first London gallery and third home (with locations already in Los Angeles and New York), and it’s tucked away among the grand mansions of Mayfair.
“London is a centre for architecture and design in the UK, but beyond that it is a window into the rest of Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It’s a place which allows us the freedom to fully express the idiosyncrasies of the Apparatus brand and allows us to present a seductive and compelling story to a broad, international audience,” says LA-born artistic director Gabriel Hendifar, who co-founded the interdisciplinary design studio alongside Jeremy Anderson in 2012. “Our clientele range from architects and interior designers to design savvy fashion consumers who want to bring the same level of sophistication to their home as they create in their closet. Being on [Mount] street, in this city, feels like exactly the right way to engage both of those audiences.”
Renowned for its all-encompassing approach to seductive design and curated spaces that celebrate tiny, nuanced, emotive details – as well as Hendifar’s own talent for storytelling – Apparatus synthesises bold, pared-back lighting, furniture and object collections. Warm and eclectic, it uses a mixture of brass, marble, suede, horsehair, lacquer and porcelain to craft its erections which draw on the visual language of design’s past. Melding simple, polished forms with soulful, textural materials, heavy porcelain chain hangings or matte python-skin detailing, each piece is designed at its headquarters in New York City and brought to life at its dedicated Brooklyn factory (which is “specifically calibrated [for Apparatus] and will remain the heart of its operation”), and goes on to become part of a permanent, ever-expanding, catalogue of designs – a wholly imagined world. “Our strategy is always to make objects that celebrate craftsmanship and the human hand, and to tell compelling and seductive stories,” Hendifar explains.
Formerly a Christopher Kane boutique, the historic Grade II-listed space at 7 Mount Street – acquired by the studio in 2021 – dates back to the 1890s and encapsulates 3,200 square-feet of Apparatus lighting, furniture and objects strategically splayed through the rich Italian Calacatta Classico marble and subtle, hand-trowelled plaster walls and flooring. “Because the building is Grade II-listed, we’ve built an entire shell inside the original architecture to not interfere with its integrity,” says Hendifar. “Some of the original classical ornamentation is reinterpreted in the plaster work on the walls and ceilings on the ground floor in a way that is distilled and expressed through an Apparatus lens.”
A property rendered in grand red brick and Portland stone, you’ll enter through a vestibule sheathed in patinated brass into the main gallery space. Set across two dramatically scaled floors punctuated by a series of imposing columns set within a bronze mirror border, the levels are bound together by an opulent burl-lined staircase complete with textural suede balustrade – a nod to the restrained, modernist beauty of Eltham Palace’s alluring stairwells in South London and Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan, which were both constructed in the 1930s. Also bordered by bronze, a vast suspended internal ceiling lends the space a subtly extraterrestrial atmosphere of a spacecraft.
The steps give way to the lower ground floor Lounge, an utterly immersive room that feels like a luxe private member’s club and is entirely veneered in bronze mirror. Ruled by a generously-sized sofa as well as the studio’s elevated library of materials and finishes for your browsing pleasure, it invites those who enter to linger for a little while.
At times autobiographical, portraits of Hendifar’s maternal grandmother, Shazdeh, and his mother, Afsaneh, hang along the interior walls of the gallery. “We’ve commissioned a number of portraits of women in my family who are important to me for the space,” explains Henifar, whose parents moved from Iran to LA in the late 1970s. “The feeling of being in a new place with something to prove is familiar to me from my childhood as a first generation Iranian American growing up in Los Angeles. My instinct was to bring my family with me to this new place, both for a sense of love and security, and also to project the energy of gracious hospitality that the women in my family taught me.” He continues, “In many ways, the London gallery is conceived as a fantasy home for my grandmother. It is through these Persian matriarchs that I developed my own understanding of gracious hospitality, and what it means to welcome people into a space.”
As Apparatus stakes a claim in one of London’s most illustrious design destinations and aristocratic neighbourhoods, the gallery presents a broad range of pieces from its collections such as: “the Segment dining table, limited-edition Interlude pieces, best sellers like the Cloud and Trapeze series, and our entire Episode seating series,” according to the co-founder. The Reprise and Horsehair pendant light fixtures are also displayed at street level.
A living expression of the studio’s work, Apparatus’ London gallery reflects the wider ethos of the studio, endeavouring to strike an equilibrium between the machine-made and the man-made; between modernity, history and humanity. “My goal in our galleries is always to create a dialogue between the pieces in the collection and choices in the space that feel informed by their location,” Hendifar explains. “[Because] design is an expression of who we are and what we value. It is about identity, connection and humanity.”
A marvel of Mount Street, step inside and become immersed in the fantasy of Apparatus’ wonderfully sculpted world.
Photography by Matthew Placek.
