Silk is among the most temporally alive of products. Woven into a fixed things, it continues to behave– moving in tone and luminosity as light relocations throughout it throughout the day, reacting to the audience’s angle in methods couple of other textiles can. That quality of continuous, peaceful change sits at the center of SVILA, Ana Kraš’s solo exhibition at Emma Scully Gallery, which opened Might 7, 2026, and stays on view through June 13, 2026.
The exhibit takes its name from the Serbian word for silk and combines SVILA Side Tables, Glass Coffee Tables, and Panel Lamps– each produced in 2 color variations. The collection is not about silk as decoration, but as a load-bearing product concept: something with structural and optical properties worth questioning throughout different functional and sculptural item typologies. Known for an intuitive and tactile technique to design, Kraš considers how silk acts in relation to wood, glass, and metal,
permitting the product to move from fabric to atmosphere, surface area, structure, and light. In the Panel Lamps, woven silk diffuses light through its irregular weave structure, making its texture visible as a luminous field instead of a surface. In the Glass Coffee Tables, a reflective top layer frames the silk underneath, compressing depth while introducing gloss and shadow. The Side Tables expose the material most straight, without mediation, emphasizing its raw and tactile qualities. Throughout all
three, the same material reads in a different way– soft, glowing, tactile, mutable– depending on what surrounds it.< img src= "https://design-milk.com/images/2026/05/svila-ana-kra-emma-scully-gallery-23.jpg"alt="A close-up of the base of a square, dark wood pedestal standing on a light beige carpet."width="1280" height="1280 "/ > The hand-carved wood elements throughout the collection were produced using a conventional Balkan technique, performed in partnership with craftsmens in Bosnia who continue to practice a UNESCO-protected method. The sculpting lines the edges of both table styles, extending the exhibition’s interest in material behavior into another register of craft. Kraš has long been drawn to line as a formal gadget: her 2008 Bonbon light, which released her global profile at Salone del Mobile while she was still a student of interior architecture and furnishings design at the University of Applied Arts in Belgrade, was built from repeated yarn threads rendered into volumetric kind. That throughline continues across her broader practice, from delicate linear illustrations and massive oil-stick works to the extruded lines of her Mara furniture pieces.
< img src="https://design-milk.com/images/2026/05/svila-ana-kra-emma-scully-gallery-18.jpg"alt ="A contemporary rectangular coffee table with a glass top and black base, set on a beige carpet versus a plain off-white wall. "width="1280"height=" 1280"/ > Kraš developed this body of work in the weeks following the birth of her kid, making use of the psychological state of that period– the feeling of enclosure, softness, and peaceful transformation– as a conceptual starting point.”In those early days, I felt suspended in a peaceful, protective space– quite like being inside a cocoon– and I wished to work from that feeling of softness, closeness, and improvement,”she says. This led her back to silk’s origin: the cocoon, a structure at the same time protective and momentary, constructed for emergence. Silk is inherently about improvement. It begins as a secretion, becomes a fiber, and is woven into cloth.
During that period, she spoke exclusively in Serbian to her newborn, which drew her towards including her cultural heritage more straight into the work. The Bosnian collaboration is the outcome: a choice that roots the collection in a specific craft geography rather than allowing it to drift in the generalized language of artisanal production. UNESCO acknowledgment for traditional Balkan woodcarving strategies acknowledges a practice under genuine pressure from industrialization; embedding it in practical things sold through a gallery gives it both visibility and continued use.
That cultural uniqueness is especially resonant within Kraš’s more comprehensive career, which has actually moved across cities, disciplines, and scales. Her practice covers furniture and interiors, photography, art, set style, fashion, fabrics, ceramics, and creative direction, yet it stays recognizable through a spontaneous sensibility, easy kinds, and an unanticipated technique to color. With SVILA, those impulses are distilled into a collection that feels both deeply individual and materially precise. Silk ends up being less a decoration than a way of thinking of time, care, inheritance, and change.
To get more information about the designer and maker, go to emmascullygallery.com.
Photography by Joe Kramm.
Leo Lei translates his enthusiasm for minimalism into his daily-updated blog site Leibal. In addition, you can find uniquely designed minimalist items and furniture at the Leibal Store.