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A few weeks before their 69th birthday on 26 July – a date shared with Carl Jung, James Lovelock and Sandra Bullock – Del LaGrace Volcano gives me a video tour of their Swedish apartment. The white walls are filled with photographs, primarily their own, but also by friends, while a stack of magazines includes issues that feature their 1995 work, Portrait With Blue Beard, on the cover.

‘I surround myself with my people,’ explains Volcano, who resides in an area they characterise as distinctly un-queer, just outside Örebro city centre. The adorned walls, essentially a gallery of their communities, are a necessary tonic.

An early instigator of LGBTQI+ visual culture, Volcano started taking photographs in the 1970s, and spent the subsequent two decades developing a reputation for their powerful, oftentimes intimate, bodies of work examining sex and identity, made in and around the queer spaces they inhabited at the time. ‘I'm a bit of a sociologist, and just constantly curious,’ they say.

In 2019, their portraits of drag kings – published as a book with Jack Halberstam 20 years earlier – appeared in the group show ‘Kiss My Genders’ at the Hayward Gallery, while in 2023 the Tate exhibition ‘Women In Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990’ brought new eyes to their Queer Dyke Cruising pictures: chief amongst them was Isabella Burley of Climax Books, who published the series in full last year.

The Tate show, via curator Linsey Young, additionally introduced the artist to Dr. Maggie Matić, director of London gallery Auto Italia, where their major new solo exhibition has just opened. ‘Sensual / Mutual’ runs through 25 October with a sister show, ‘Love Bites Back’, following at Edinburgh Art Festival from 14-30 August. While the former focuses on America and the dyke scene Volcano was part of in the 1970s and '80s – the lesbian biker bar Scott’s P.I.T. and the artist-run Goodman Building in San Francisco both feature, as well as ARF, or Asylum for Rowdy Females and Dogs, in Santa Fe – the Scottish show draws from their Queer Archive of Resistance, highlighting work made in England and Scotland between 1982 and 1995.

‘Everything I make work about is something my heart is attached to – it’s not possible to separate,’ says Volcano (their very first photographs were of their sister, while past lovers appear frequently in their pictures). ‘I have no imagination, really, only the life I lead. This thing of looking at gender, it's not just because it's interesting, it affects me personally.’

Until their teens Volcano, who is intersex and employs the term 'hermaphrodyke,' was socialised as a girl; the 1995 blue beard portrait, made when they were in their late 30s, was the first time they had grown out their facial hair.

‘I love landscape [photography], but if a person, especially a queer body, doesn't disrupt a kind of normative space, what is it?’ they continue. ‘My life and the people I draw into my orbit are all part of my work. There’s lots of mirrors in it, people reflecting back at each other and literal mirrors, which I now understand is a way of looking at myself, making avatars for people.’

Leather biker jackets are one such device in this vein, and feature in one of the more, otherwise traditional, portraits in ‘Love Bites Back’. Volcano’s then-girlfriend, Sylvia McFarlane, sits on a patterned sofa in Edinburgh in 1989; her arm is around her grandparents, who sport warm, knowing smiles and the younger couple’s chunky black jackets, lapels full of badges.

It’s not lost on Volcano that the new shows concentrate on their early work, despite their career straddling five decades. ‘It does seem like there's been a renaissance. The time I was most active doing this work – the '80s, '90s, early 2000s – is really resonating with people now,’ they note, negotiating the cycle of generational nostalgia aloud.

It’s worth mentioning also, how the politics of those core decades correlates with the contemporary landscape, from the homophobia encouraged by Section 28 and the AIDS crisis, to today’s growing confidence in anti-trans and far right ideology. Volcano’s work, with its depictions of queer sex and attention to lesbians and gender-non conforming people specifically, has largely failed to break into the mainstream.

‘I was good friends with Derek Jarman the last two years of his life. We would have lunch and he would drag me to his gallery,’ says Volcano, relaying their relationship with this version of the art world. ‘He tried so hard to share his access, but people were absolutely not interested in anything to do with lesbians’.

This conversation around visibility extends also to funding, and for their part Volcano says this has transformed really in the last five years. With financial support from the Swedish Arts Council for example, they were able to have a residency in Berlin, where they had the space to truly study their archive (this no doubt contributed to the way ‘Sensual / Mutual’ and ‘Love Bites Back’ came together).

In Edinburgh these ideas will be further expanded, as Volcano’s material presence is amplified when their work spills out of the gallery space across billboards that are planned for the city centre. Typically concerned with foregrounding ‘communities that are not especially seeking recognition, but are considered either illegal, illegible, invalid’, as their practice has long been, this kind of engagement with urban architecture feels properly exciting.

'Sensual / Mutual' at Auto Italia is in London until 25 October. 'Love Bites Back' is on view in Scotland as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival from 14-30^tAugust.

Ashiesh Shah has long been a formidable presence in India’s design landscape. An architect, designer, artist and collector, he works across residences, retail interiors and collectible objects, with a practice shaped by restraint and a deep commitment to India’s craft traditions. One of India’s most influential creative figures, Shah has also curated design exhibitions across the country, while his own work has been presented at institutions including the National Museum in New Delhi. In 2022, Shah became the first Indian designer represented by collectible design gallery The Invisible Collection. And more recently, he opened his first solo exhibition in the UK, Taamr at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, on show till 20 September 2026.

Discover the work of Ashiesh Shah

Art, design and an appreciation for beauty have always come instinctively to Shah. At the age of ten, he persuaded his mother to purchase a work by Manjit Bawa, the celebrated Indian modernist; the painting would go on to become one of the family’s most prized possessions, as well as a significant collector’s piece. 'What pulled me in was the restraint in his work – how much he left unsaid on the canvas, how a single figure could hold that much space without needing anything around it to justify its presence,' Shah recalls.

He moved to New York to study Interior Architecture at Parsons in the early 2000s, and on returning to Mumbai, established his eponymous studio in 2008, grounding the practice in the principles of wabi-sabi. Those who recognised the subtlety of this language were quickly drawn to Shah’s work. Yet communicating its quiet power was not always straightforward. 'Quiet design does not sell well on paper; it can read as empty on a mood board, so I would just bring the material into the room,' he says. 'A slab of stone, a sample of plaster, something they could touch.'

Much of Shah’s early work was residential, though some retail projects that have stayed with him include the first Le Mill store in Mumbai, an Indian multi-brand concept housed within a former warehouse. Rather than rely on the artificial lighting typical of retail interiors at the time, Shah opened up the roof and introduced glazing, allowing daylight to travel through the building.

There’s also a space for Raw Mango, the celebrated Indian handwoven textile label. Stripped of wallpaper, pattern and overt colour, the space is defined, instead, by custom furniture, brass counters and fixtures, rendered in a restrained palette of natural textures.

The Indiabulls apartment in Mumbai is a richly curated home layered with art, handcrafted elements and contemporary interventions, and the Kolla penthouse in Hyderabad is defined by control rather than ostentation, revealing Shah’s preference for quiet materiality and considered detail.

All the while, Shah’s fascination with objects was taking shape alongside his architectural practice. 'I have always wanted to be an artist and, more than that, a sculptor. That instinct has been with me from very early on,' he says. 'Architecture became a natural way into it because it allowed me to sculpt with light itself, shaping how it moves through a space rather than simply designing walls around it. Product design grew from that same impulse, only at a more intimate scale.'

The ‘Liminal’ bench was the first object Shah released into the world, followed by several others, including the ‘Naga’ chair, cast in aluminium with a dark bronze finish and paired with an elephant-grass coat, and his ‘Channapatna’ furniture and lighting collection, a contemporary interpretation of Karnataka’s traditional wooden toy-making craft, composed of carefully turned, naturally lacquered beads. The ‘Channapatna’ light was created in collaboration with master craftswoman Noor Salma.

Sustained artisan collaborations are at the heart of his practice. 'We are not simply working within the boundaries of their craft; we are redefining it alongside them, pushing a technique somewhere it has not been asked to go before,' he says. 'That is when they stop waiting for instruction and begin bringing me ideas of their own. It is built the hard way, through failure, experimentation and years of trust.'

Now, ‘Taamr’, Shah’s first solo show in the UK, marks a significant moment in his long engagement with collectible design. 'Through materials such as copper, handcrafted mirrors, rudraksha and reclaimed objects, the exhibition explores how familiar forms can be reimagined without losing their cultural memory.'

Looking ahead, Shah is working on several significant residences across India, alongside a collaboration with Spanish designer and sculptor Nacho Carbonell. Craft, he says, will remain central to his practice. Reflecting on the decades to come, he adds: 'I hope the craft outlasts my name. If someone standing before a piece 50 years from now can still read the hand that made it, the material it came from and the tradition it drew upon, then it has done its job.'

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A Welsh cottage, White Breakers, has been reimagined for the 21st century, courtesy of London-based architecture studio Unknown Works. The aim was to redesign an existing single-storey house on the edge of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park to improve both functionality and sustainable architecture – and to do so in the 'stealthiest' way possible.

Explore this reimagined Welsh cottage

The house offers long views of the Irish Sea and features large windows that bring in the natural vistas in all the main spaces. The architects sought to enhance this, implementing a muted colour palette inside and out, with dark colours outside and bright whites and timber accents inside. The slick look achieved makes the house discreet as well as warm and sophisticated.

Energy efficiency was a huge priority for the team and its client. Ensuring a low carbon footprint, both in terms of construction and the home's eventual habitation and operation, informed many of the design decisions. Keeping things nature-friendly was also crucial. A bat box was installed on the building's exterior, for example.

The clients, a pair of creatives with a main base in London’s Notting Hill, are a long-term Unknown Works collaborator – their London home was the practice’s first completed project, in 2016. This allowed the team to have flowing, in-depth discussions, working through the elements of the structure that needed updating and the best ways forward in each case.

It was ‘a bit of a Frankenstein building’, says Unknown Works director Kaowen Ho. ‘It was typically energy inefficient, like so many properties of its era, built with ad hoc extensions and very little thought given to the lifecycle of the building or how it might be used in the future, let alone sustainability or biodiversity. The house also showed signs of water ingress, thermal bridging and damp, amongst other critical construction flaws, whilst the interior was a warren of small spaces with no sensible layout or flow.

‘Overall, this is a stealthy, subtle and restrained design,’ he adds, ‘with the low-slung black, even brutal, exterior giving way to a very soft and bright interior, offering the warmth and welcome of a proper family home.’

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Around the turn of the 20th century, the Lido, a seven-mile barrier island in the Venetian Lagoon, was home to some of the grandest hotels in Europe. It inspired Thomas Mann to pen his novella Death in Venice there in 1912, and, two decades later, was so cinematic that it became the home of the Venice Film festival.

Even if you don’t have plans to visit Venice this summer, New York’s Galerie56 is offering the next-best thing – for design buffs, anyway. Now through 17 October, the Manhattan art and design outpost is teaming up with Italy’s prestigious Nilufar gallery on a new exhibition of design rarities called ‘Nilufar Grand Hotel, Vista Mare.’

The residency (Nilufar’s second stateside presentation with Galerie56) is a continuation of the Milanese collectible design powerhouse’s Milan Design Week show, ‘Grand Hotel’, in which gallery founder Nina Yashar reimagined the Nilufar Depot as if it were a sumptuous Old World resort. The New York version, similarly, uses design treasures to conjure a hotel – only this time, one set in the Lido.

‘I found myself returning to the atmosphere of Venice in summer – not Venice as a destination, but Venice as an idea: a place where architecture, water, light, memory and culture merge into a singular, evocative experience,’ said Galerie56 founder, architect Lee Mindel.

Mindel, working with the Nilufar team, hand-selected objects that conjured a sunny beach scene in the Lido – a place the architect first visited as a teenager. An ultra-rare, Formica-topped Carlo Mollino dining table, first designed in 1956, forms an imaginary lobby, flanked by a pair of minimalist wood ‘Miguelito’ chairs by Mexican architect Luis Barragán. Opposite the entrance, a golden ‘40s-era knotted rug designed by Swedish designer Barbro Nilsson forms an expanse of ‘sand’, while a round Fontana Arte cocktail table and whimsical Gabriella Crespi floor lamp evoke the sun and a cheerful beach umbrella, respectively.

Fans of Crespi, the glamorous multidisciplinary Italian designer who rose to fame during the 1950s, will find many delights here, from a carved-wood table lamp in the shape of a frog; to rattan furniture; to a set of gleaming brass drawers created for Christian Dior; to a futuristic metallic floor lamp that sprouts from the floor like buoys floating on the sea. Other design masters, including Gio Ponti, Martino Gamper and the Italian-born Brazilian designer Lina Bo Bardi, make cameos.

One of the most enticing items in the show is actually one of the oldest – a scroll-shaped mirror and shelf designed by Carlo Bugatti. Created in 1902 – a decade before Mann authored Death in Venice – the piece feels at once of its era and strikingly modern, thanks to a stenciled Art Nouveau iris border; embossed copper and mother of pearl decorative elements; and a small hinged cupboard that opens to reveal diminutive drawers and turned columns evocative of Piazza San Marco.

‘They are works of exceptional craftsmanship and beauty, but they also carry stories, cultural references, and emotional resonance,’ Mindel said. ‘“Grand Hotel, Vista Mare” is ultimately a celebration of those connections – an exploration of hospitality, elegance and the enduring romance of Italian design.’

'Grand Hotel, Vista Mare' is on view through 17 October at Galerie56, located at 240 Church Street New York, NY, USA 10013

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

Casacor São Paulo, the flagship edition of Brazil's annual architecture and interiors exhibition – where designers transform an existing site into dozens of showcase spaces – concludes on 9 August 2026. Before it does, Brazil-based design enthusiasts should make their way to the historic Parque da Água Branca to experience ‘Semibreve Studio’, a space by Estúdio Clara Nahas.

The 55 sq m apartment is a tribute to Nahas' late mother, a pianist who profoundly shaped the designer’s creative outlook. Framed in the bedroom is the original score of a song her mother composed after Nahas' birth – the designer describes it as a kind of birth certificate for her artistic sensibility. In the living area, a Todeschini kitchen finished in a Giardino-tinted oak veneer flows into a sideboard built for a record player and her mother's vinyl collection, capped by a Da Vinci quartzite countertop.

The studio's name references the semibreve – the longest note value in musical notation. That idea of sustained stillness runs through the design, which is meant to slow visitors down. One way it achieves this is by inverting typical housing logic: you enter through the private zone, passing the bedroom and study, before arriving at the open living and kitchen areas.

Recreate the mood

At the centre of the plan stands a sculptural burgundy cylinder clad in deep red ceramic tiles by Turkish manufacturer Keramika, proportioned to tuck beneath the building's principal ceiling beam. It serves a triple function, enclosing the bathroom while carving out a study desk on one side and, on the bedroom face, a combined music nook and vanity. Above this, a display of hourglasses serves as another poetic reminder of time's passage.

The apartment preserves the building's original timber parquet floors and gabled beam-and-slat ceiling, while introducing a series of quirky interventions. Furniture favours soft, organic forms, including the ‘Amana’ modular sofa by Nildo José, paired with a curated selection of Brazilian design and art that foregrounds women creators: pieces by Lina Bo Bardi and Cristiana Bertolucci, a golden-grass pendant lamp crafted by Quilombola artisans, and artworks by Maria Bonomi, Jandyra Waters and others.

The bedroom features layered indirect lighting, a Líder Design bed and a Botteh rug, while the adjoining bathroom turns fully immersive – wrapping floor and ceiling in red and pairing honed Napoleon Bordeaux marble with dark-finished Deca fixtures.

Semibreve Studio achieves a remarkable amount within the confines of a showcase apartment. Its personal and musical allusions are constant, clever and cohesive – a moving tribute to Nahas' mother that succeeds in making visitors pause and reflect amid the chaos of São Paulo.

For this summer’s eyewear, bigger is better, it seems, as face-shielding styles dominated the collections – from Phoebe Philo’s enormous ‘Bombé’ sunglasses to Miu Miu’s colourful goggle-like frames, and the armour-like eyewear at Saint Laurent, which captured a louche, 1980s-inflected sensuality.

These enveloping, mask-like frames make for the perfect summer eyewear, repelling not only the sun, but the world at large after one of those mornings after the night before. The Georgian designer Demna, current creative director of Gucci, channelled this hedonistic mood in his debut runway show for the Italian house, evoking 2000s Hollywood starlets in his own subculture-infused style. ‘Unapologetically sexy, extravagant and daring,’ he said of the mood, seeing smudged eyeliner, body-contouring minidresses and louche tailoring accessorised with shielding black shades.

Here, the Wallpaper* style editors pick eight of the best shield sunglasses to accessorise your summer – from the ultra-oversized to the sporty and streamlined.