At APPARATUS in NYC's Chelsea-Adjacent West 30th Street, Act V: Afsaneh Goes on View

New York design studio APPARATUS is showing its new collection, Act V: Afsaneh, at 124 West 30th Street in Manhattan. On October 4 the studio announced that the work would be unveiled the next day on its website and at that address. On October 6 it said the New York exhibition was on view, and added that a London unveiling would follow the next week.

Afsaneh is the Persian word for fable, and it is also the name of Gabriel Hendifar's mother. In a letter on the studio's website, opening "Dear Dreamer," he describes looking for a new way of working: shaping curves over and over with a pen until forms seemed to emerge as though they had always existed. He says he wanted to reach beyond a single historical moment and tell a story about life.

The letter is built around cycles: creation and destruction, separation from the self and the return to it. A seed becomes a flower, and people gather to celebrate its dance with the sun and breathe in its fleeting scent. At the center, he writes, is the divine feminine, the source and creative force and the nurturer within each of us. The imagined stage is a temple in the sky, brought to life through the distilled language of Martha Graham, whom he calls the mother of modern dance.

Scent is part of the setting. The air is perfumed with Damask Rose, Oud and Frankincense, offered, in his words, as a gesture of protection and potential. Oud and frankincense will be familiar to Japanese readers from incense and perfumery, which makes the scent-led approach a natural point of connection.

The studio's Instagram images show pendants with milky glass globes hung from sinuous black arms, a vertical row of wall lights in muted glass tones, and a glossy black bowl carved with concentric ripples beneath a glowing orb. The address is near Penn Station and Hudson Yards, so it fits easily into a walk for anyone interested in lighting, furniture and interiors.