Glass doesn't just reflect the world. Sometimes, it creates a new one.
Step into Papa Don’t Preach in Delhi, and look up. Floating overhead is not a chandelier, not quite an artwork, and certainly not just lighting. It’s something closer to a coral reef in mid-bloom - a surreal, kaleidoscopic vision brought to life in glass and brass by Glass Forest.
This installation doesn’t hang from the ceiling so much as grow from it. From the center unfurls a complex bloom: leaves in emerald green and milky white, bell-shaped blossoms in blush and lilac, tendrils that drip like dew-heavy vines. The palette is as vivid as a coral forest - soft seafoam, rose gold, translucent aquamarine - each piece lit gently from within, as if bioluminescent.
At first glance, it’s otherworldly. Then, slowly, the references start to surface. These aren’t just flowers - they’re sea anemones, seaweed fronds, jellyfish bells, and algae swirls. It’s a chandelier dreamed up not in a ballroom, but at the bottom of a warm, ancient sea.
Honest to Materials
What’s truly extraordinary is the material honesty: every petal, every droplet is made from hand-blown glass, shaped with breath and fire, and held together by brass stems that twist like roots through water. The craft is meticulous. Nothing here is machine-made. Everything is alive with human touch.
Glass Forest, the design studio behind this piece, is known for transforming fragility into wonder. Here, they’ve leaned into the contradictions of their medium - glass that looks soft, brass that looks organic, light that feels liquid. It's a paradox suspended above your head.
And the setting couldn’t be more perfect
Papa Don’t Preach, with its fashion-forward ethos and fearless design, is no stranger to theatrical interiors. But this installation doesn’t compete. It transforms. It casts a spell on the space beneath it.
Side note: We took a photo of it, with the raw scaffolding around the artwork during installation and it somehow adds to the feeling - like you’ve stumbled on a deep-sea relic being carefully uncovered.
There’s something inherently symbolic about choosing underwater life as inspiration. Marine ecosystems are delicate, threatened, often unseen. Much like glass, they exist in a state of tension - exquisite and vulnerable. By bringing that beauty up into an urban setting, Glass Forest invites us to look up and feel something. Awe. Stillness. Maybe even urgency.
Because here’s the truth: this isn’t just decor. It’s an experience. A reminder that the most moving design doesn’t shout. It shimmers.
In a city built on speed and noise, this quiet forest of glass offers a moment of suspension. A pause. A bloom.
And that, really, is the magic: in the heart of Delhi, under a restaurant ceiling, the ocean grows quietly upward - in glass and in light.