Muller Van Severen’s anniversary
Belgian duo Muller Van Severen will celebrate their 15th anniversary with an exhibition called “Silhouettes: Celebrating 15 Years” at Salone del Mobile, using the fair to frame a career milestone as a sculptural show. That’s the kind of anniversary moment that tends to draw collectors and critics alike during Milan week. (interiordaily.com)
Milan design week is where furniture launches usually fight for attention with bigger booths, brighter lamps, and longer guest lists. Muller Van Severen is using the week for something quieter: a 15-year retrospective called *Silhouettes: Celebrating 15 Years* instead of a standard product rollout. (interiordaily.com) The show opens from April 18 to April 26, 2026 at Ordet, on Via Filippino Lippi 4 in Milan, just ahead of the main Salone del Mobile fair dates of April 21 to April 26 at Fiera Milano Rho. That timing drops the exhibition directly into the week when collectors, editors, and design buyers are already crossing the city. (dezeen.com) (salonemilano.it) Muller Van Severen is the Belgian studio of Fien Muller and Hannes Van Severen, who founded the practice in early spring 2011. Their work has always sat in the narrow space between furniture and sculpture, which is why an anniversary show makes sense for them in a way it would not for a sofa brand built on catalogs and discounts. (mullervanseveren.be) That art-design blur is not a slogan they added later. Muller studied photography, Van Severen studied sculpture, and the pair built a reputation on pieces that look like line drawings pulled into three dimensions and then made useful enough to live with. (ignant.com) (mullervanseveren.be) For this anniversary, they are not showing 15 chairs or 15 “best hits.” The exhibition centers on 15 unique, life-size aluminium candle holders, turning a domestic object into something closer to a standing figure or stage prop. (clubparadis.prezly.com) (dezeen.com) The partners around the show explain who it is for. Apartamento, the interiors publisher, is collaborating on the project and a new book, while Tim Van Laere Gallery, the Antwerp-and-Rome gallery that works in contemporary art, is presenting the exhibition. (mullervanseveren.be) (clubparadis.prezly.com) That mix of publisher, gallery, and design week audience fits the way the studio has grown. Muller Van Severen makes its own collections by hand with small-scale fabricators, but it also designs for brands including Hay, BD Barcelona Design, Zanotta, Kvadrat, and valerie_objects. (clubparadis.prezly.com) (valerie-objects.com) (mullervanseveren.be) The studio has also been expanding its own platform, not just lending its name to other companies. In late 2025 it announced its first official webshop, a new showroom near Ghent, and fresh collaborations with Hay and BD Barcelona x Kassl Editions. (interiordaily.com) So the Milan show lands at a very specific moment: 15 years after the studio’s 2011 founding, months after opening new commercial channels, and days before the biggest furniture fair in the world starts its 2026 edition. Instead of marking that point with a sales pitch, Muller Van Severen is marking it with 15 oversized candle holders and a book, which is a very precise way of saying it still wants to be read as an art practice as much as a design business. (mullervanseveren.be) (interiordaily.com) (salonemilano.it)
