Bottega Veneta stages a Japanese-themed pop-up store in Milan

For this year’s Salone del Mobile, in addition to unveiling a new suite of luxurious homeware and furniture, Bottega Veneta staged a brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pop-up store on the fourth floor of its new Milanese HQ.

The ’Made in Japan’ theme presented a small cache of Japanese objets - created by Japanese artisans and master craftsmen - that had been specially selected by creative director, Tomas Maier, and Seiichi Kamei, the editor-in-chief of Japanese design and architecture magazine Casa Brutus. Maier said the store was created so that visitors to Salone could ’take something small and memorable home with them. Most importantly, I hope they are inspired by the beauty, sophistication and workmanship of the objects they see.’

And there was plenty of beautiful sophistication on display at Bottega, as devotees snapped up Akita cedar wooden pitchers by Yasutaka Shimizu, hand-cut Shippo Kiriko glasses by Glass Forest, as well as a covetable selection of handbags, messenger bags, totes and wallets that Maier had designed specially for the occasion. In limited editions, of course.

The pop-up store ran alongside a competition exhibition of furniture design, for which Bottega had collaborated with Tokyo University.