Iris Ceramica Group’s new releases present surfaces you can read with your eyes closed
For its 2026 releases, Iris Ceramica Group pairs two new Reloaded Color Blocks by Diesel Living with new surfaces from Fiandre, Ariostea and Sapienstone.
In the frame of the concept “One Matter, Many Stories”, Iris Ceramica Group put one idea at the centre of its presentation: ceramic can act as a creative language, in step with fashion and design, rather than just a technical material. The Group describes its new surfaces as beauty, customisation, and suggestions from other creative fields translated into slabs.
The clearest example is Reloaded, the Diesel Living with Iris Ceramica project, which has now been expanded with two more Color Blocks. Around it sit three stone-inspired surfaces from three different brands of the Group: Dover White by Fiandre, Portland by Ariostea, and Negresco by Sapienstone.
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Iris Ceramica Group:
Reloaded: two more Color Blocks for Diesel Living with Iris Ceramica
The partnership between Diesel Living with Iris Ceramica began in 2015, so this is its tenth anniversary. Reloaded, the latest chapter, is built around four Color Blocks, each conceived as a material moodboard: a design-world object assembled with the codes of fashion. The first two, Gold w/ Bronze and Black w/ Grey, debuted at the ICG Gallery in Milan during Fuorisalone 2026. The two new ones, Red w/ White and Blue w/ Silver, complete the palette.
The project is the last one developed under Glenn Martens’ creative direction, in collaboration with Controvento. Each Color Block combines three scales of ceramic. Majolica surfaces are the small format, large slabs set the field, and a few specific surfaces carry the personality. Each surface has its own character, but they are all designed to talk to each other.
Red w/ White is the more theatrical of the two, and it is composed of three different surfaces. Arabescato Rosso is a slab whose veining runs across the surface like brushstrokes, and beside it sit Spider White, with fine veins that spread like a spiderweb, and Acid Majolica Pearl, a 15x15cm size with a distorted pattern.
Blue w/ Silver has a more literal fashion reference through the Denim Blue slab, which turns the fabric into an architectural element. The weave of the thread rises on the surface and can be felt by hand. This combination is also matched with Spider White and Acid Majolica in Silver, with the addition of Explosion Blue.
Dover White by Fiandre
While Reloaded is about attitude, Dover White is about restraint and depth. Fiandre created a luminous, enveloping surface in which white mixes with fluid reflections and swirls. The brand compares the slab to a landscape shaped by time, and emphasises that it can be appreciated with eyes closed by running fingertips over its depressions and movements.
The technology behind it is IRIDIA, a new material-based technology developed by Iris Ceramica Group. The process incorporates all of the characteristics of natural aesthetics. Under light, the slab turns almost iridescent, while to the touch it offers concave and convex relief, polished passages, and layered designs.
Portland by Ariostea
Ariostea takes its reference from Portland stone, the limestone quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, which is among the most recognisable materials in English architecture. It is the pale stone of many of London’s landmark buildings, and it was used extensively in the city’s rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1666. The ceramic version has a fine-grained ground in light grey and sand, with soft cloudy tone shifts and faint sedimentary shading that suggests the passage of time. It comes in three colourways: Greige, White, and Beige.
The new feature is the Weave decor, developed specifically for Portland. Over the surface, a fine veil of pure granules forms a dense interlaced pattern of geometric lines, recalling rattan. Stone meets a woven fibre, and the combination adds depth and a different kind of tactility, inviting a sensory experience that goes beyond sight, in a similar way to Dover White.
Negresco by Sapienstone
Sapienstone’s contribution is the darkest and most dramatic of the three. Negresco is based on a Brazilian brecciated quartzite. A breccia forms when a rock breaks apart and its fragments are cemented back together in a new pattern. The way they redistribute carries information about their story, angularity shows how far the pieces travelled and where they come from. Some breccias come from tectonic action, since they can result from rock being shattered and crushed in seismic areas. Quartzite is a metamorphosed quartz sandstone, so a brecciated quartzite is a hard rock that has been broken, cemented again, and polished into something decorative.
The Natural finish was chosen to highlight Negresco’s raw and dramatic nature. The eye reads the structure of the veins immediately, but it is the hand that confirms what the surface is like, thanks to a treatment designed to emphasise tactility.
What the novelties suggest
Seen together, the projects read as variations of a single idea, lying under the theme of “One Matter, Many Stories,” which talks about the single medium of ceramics taking a different form each time it meets a different context and source of inspiration. A woven fibre, a limestone shaped by sea and time, a rock broken and reassembled, a fabric used in fashion: each one starts from a story as a reference, conveyed through the same material.
What sets them apart is the interpretation of these stories, made possible also by the technologies the Group has developed itself, which give the surfaces their materiality. Relief, depth, and finish are designed into the surface, and they change how it is lived as well as how it looks: the eye reads it and the hand confirms it. Iris Ceramica Group describes its mission as improving the interaction between people and the environments they inhabit, and this is where the mission becomes concrete.
