Lighting brand Blue Green Works is something of a unique voice in American design. Launched by Wallpaper* US 400 honoree Peter B Staples in 2020 with business partner James McAvey, it is defined by an open-ended dialogue with vernacular histories fused with Staples' personal perspectives, offering up proportions and silhouettes that are, in his words, ‘bold, and reference decades of work and rooms as inspiration'. Some would call its aesthetic vocabulary minimal, others referential. ‘I'm not in a rush to define it,' says Staples, who honed his palate at leading collectible design gallery The Future Perfect and lighting brand Apparatus, where he cut his teeth learning the ins and outs of the trade.
His open-ended, ever-curious approach has allowed the studio to be exploratory in both its creation and production. Previous collections have included a survey of lighting objects that contemplate symbols of power (from trophies to 1930s military tattoos), and fixtures referencing Horace Gifford's modernist Fire Island homes. Inspiration for the studio's latest series (its seventh) took Staples all the way to the Venetian glass-blowing mecca of Murano. One of the island's leading fabricators had seen Blue Green Works in a magazine article and reached out. The fourth generation owner has since become a close confidante. ‘I hope the friendship is lifelong,' says Staples.
Murano Glass and Blue Green Works
The start of the project was marked by a personal event in Staples' life: as he was en route to Murano to initiate the collaboration, he received news that his beloved mother had died. He boarded a plane, but it wasn't to Italy – instead he flew to the Midwest, where his father still resides in the Gustav Stickley Craftsman home that he grew up in. A few weeks later, Staples picked up the transatlantic journey again and would then spend the next seven months travelling back and forth to the Murano workshops to consult with its furnace experts. ‘It was interesting to be alone in Venice, which is a very weird place in the most incredible way and it would come over me in waves, like “wow, this is me out in the world, and I'm an accumulation of all of the work and love that [my mother] put into me”,' he reflects.
The time spent in Murano resulted in a collection titled ‘Garden'. ‘I needed a medium that was expressive like nothing else I had worked with,' says Staples. ‘Murano glass just felt so natural because it's expressive in its objective state, and draws from hundreds of years of stewardship and artistry. It clicked with me that the kind of emotion I needed to convey at this moment in my life was not something I had in my toolbox. I wanted to make something that was about heartbreak.'
The ‘Garden' collection is defined by clear glass, which is arranged into delicate leaves and feathers, drifting in all directions. ‘There's a stillness when you're rendering something that's alive in conveying motion, but in a solid form,' says Staples. He references the ‘Fountain' and ‘Landscape' chandeliers, where each tentacle of the feathery form almost flutters. Known for its vibrant colours and slick sturdiness, Murano glass favours drama and virtuosity; but instead, Staples pushed for each component to reveal its vulnerabilities with visible edges and unconcealed construction. ‘I've looked at so much Murano glass, but I still haven't found anything that is exactly this,' he says.
While the collection features seven works, each piece is one of one. ‘There are moulds for certain metal shapes, but these works are not being produced and stocked – everything will be created by hand for each client,' says Staples. This adds a further personalised element to this already intimate collection.
‘The more I sit with Murano glass, the more I find ways that can grow the vocabulary we're forming as a studio,' reflects Staples, who says he found a salve in ‘borrowing the emotional vocabulary of another language. So often my work is about distilling ideas and references down to very simple forms. But this project was different from the start'. ∂ bluegreenworks.com
This article appears in the August 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today
