Multiforme calls itself a manufactory of artistic glass chandeliers and a laboratory of luminous ideas. It is based at Trebaseleghe in the Veneto, north of Padua, and its catalogue runs to 86 collections and more than 500 models, nearly all of them in blown glass.
The range divides in two. Timeless holds the classical forms, and it is where colour goes furthest: the glass irises of Iris, the roses of Rosae Rosarum, and the ruby and blue Rezzonico arms of Kia Ora. Progressive is where outside designers work. Leo De Carlo put hand-shaped glass butterflies inside a cage of twisted rods and stacked lit discs into a 2m lollipop. Debonademeo's Stimma sends coloured tubes out from a metal hub. Nicola Grandesso's Light of Love is a flock of frosted doves, each holding a lamp.
What sets the house apart is how much of this can be changed. The maker's chart holds 58 glass colours and twelve metal finishes, and its technical office prepares drawings and renders for bespoke and oversized pieces. For an interior designer with a colour already chosen, that is unusual, and it is why the Caspen studio handles every Multiforme specification in writing before production begins.
‘Classical forms on one side of the catalogue, butterflies in glass cages on the other.’
