Act V: Afsaneh turns Persian myth into lighting, furniture and objects, told in four chapters, scented with rose and oud, and danced by the Martha Graham Dance Company.
The title of the new Apparatus collection does two jobs at once. In Persian, afsaneh means “fable.” It is also the name of Gabriel Hendifar’s mother, and she is the reason Apparatus Act V: Afsaneh exists as a tribute as well as a product line.
The New York studio’s artistic director has spent five years between collections, and he has come back with a story to tell. As Design Milk reports, Act V gathers lighting, furniture and objects around Persian mythology, personal history and the cyclical nature of life. Its subject is the divine feminine, framed as a source of creativity, knowledge and renewal.
Four chapters, one cycle
Hendifar has built the collection like a book. There are four chapters, each named with a Persian word, and together they trace a path from creation to connection. “Life is shaped by cycles,” he says. “Creation and destruction. The separation from self and the return.” The seed becomes the flower, and the flower is celebrated for as long as it lasts.
Esfand: The Seed comes first and covers origins, fertility and protection. Esfand is the 12th month of the Persian calendar. It is also the name of a seed traditionally used to ward off the evil eye. The motif turns up in lacquered finishes with a very edible palette: milk, honey, pomegranate, sky, dusk and night.
Gol: The Flower is where things bloom. Molded fiberglass forms delicate, membrane-like surfaces, which is about as close as a lighting fixture gets to a petal. There is also a namesake fragrance, Afsaneh, made from damask rose, oud and frankincense. A scent is the least durable thing a design studio can sell, which seems to be the point. Apparatus treats it as another material, an ephemeral one sitting among objects built to last.
Rahvi: The Serpent is the chapter about chasing knowledge and passing it on. Water-formed brass and blown glass draw sinuous lines. Semiprecious stones add color and some symbolic weight: tiger’s eye, black onyx, quartz, honey agate, red jasper, lapis lazuli and aventurine, all of them set as amulets. The idea is that a serpent’s shifting form can stand for wisdom and protection.
Jahaan: The World closes the story by looking outward, toward community and gathering. Bronze and aluminum intertwine with cast glass in forms that nod to the cosmos and to shared experience. If the first three chapters are about origins, transformation and knowledge, this one asks what happens when everyone is in the same room.
Familiar materials, new tricks
Regulars will recognize the Apparatus vocabulary of brass, glass and bronze. What changes is the handling. Water-forming and fiberglass molding open up new options for shape, surface and movement. The pieces drift between the architectural and the organic, with curves, suspended forms and layered materials carrying the symbolism. Images from the launch show clusters of glowing, multi-tiered pendants, grids of oval wall lights, a bronze reclining figure on a black pedestal, and a raw rock under a five-orb fixture.
That staging is typical of how Hendifar works. He does not design objects in isolation. He imagines whole environments in which lighting, furniture and decorative pieces share one atmosphere. Act V pushes the habit further by adding a plot.
A collection that dances
The story also reaches beyond the objects. Apparatus worked with the Martha Graham Dance Company on five short films that read the collection through movement. “I consider the heart of my work to be creating the envelope for human experience, and there is no more beautifully distilled expression of that experience than Martha’s language of movement,” Hendifar says.
The films will come out episodically from fall 2026. Viewers get the collection in installments, which suits a fable better than a single big reveal would.
The rollout follows the same logic. Act V: Afsaneh premiered in New York in October 2026. London is next later that month, then Miami and Los Angeles in February 2027. Each city gets its own interpretation of the collection, so the story changes a little with every stop.
Hendifar says that meaning is the one thing here that stays loose. The pieces carry references to mythology, memory and the natural world, but those meanings aren’t fixed. Like the fable they come from, the objects are meant to join whatever stories are already happening around them. That is a handy quality in a pendant light.
Via Design Milk
