Marlisa Marasco Turns Strait of Messina Myths Into Collectible Mirrors

Designer Marlisa Marasco presented Scilla & Cariddi, a pair of collectible wall mirrors that translate the mythology of the Strait of Messina into functional objects, at SaloneSatellite during Salone del Mobile Milano 2026.

The two pieces sit conceptually at opposite shores of the strait, between the Calabrian and Sicilian coasts. Each one reframes one of the ancient sea monsters — Scylla and Charybdis — through a mixed-material assembly of hand-modeled glazed ceramic, multi-scale reflective glass, timber substrates, and textile accents. It's a furniture-scale retelling of a navigation myth: the monsters that Homer's sailors feared become objects you hang on a wall and use every day.

How does each mirror reference its monster?

Marasco gives each piece a distinct formal and functional configuration tied to its namesake. Scilla, the guardian of the Calabrian coast, wears a crown of six glazed ceramic serpent heads. A secondary magnifying mirror evokes the creature's eye, and an integrated sponge doubles as a pin cushion.

Cariddi, the guardian of the Sicilian coast, takes the gaping mouth of a lamprey as its model. Three spiraling ceramic vortices suggest the marine whirlpools of the Charybdis myth — the monster swallowing and spewing the strait's waters — while working as wall hooks for hanging accessories.

So the mythology isn't decoration. Every sculptural element has a job: the serpent heads and vortices carry the imagery, while the sponge, magnifier and hooks make the pieces operable rather than purely figurative.

What do the materials do optically?

The mirrors combine hand-modeled glazed ceramics, flat glass, magnifying lenses, and timber backings. The overlapping, offset mirror planes fragment the viewer's reflection across varying scales, building optical shifts directly into the craft-driven wall compositions.

Two overlapping mirrors reflect the viewer at different scales, according to the project's captions, making them part of an uncanny image that recalls the mythological monster. A glazed ceramic vortex and textile fringe on Cariddi evoke the violent whirlpools of the myth while bringing contrasting materials and textures into a single composition.

The tactile textile details deliberately contrast with the ceramic and glass planes. That friction between soft and hard surfaces is part of the design's argument: the pieces operate at the intersection of figurative sculpture and functional vanity mirrors, not as one or the other.

The mirrors also shift registers when worn. According to the project's image captions, worn on the face, Scilla & Cariddi move from sculptural mirrors to embodiments of the strait's mythical creatures — the object collapses the distance between viewer and monster.

Who made it, and where can you see it?

Marlisa Marasco composed both pieces; her work is documented at marlisamarasco.com and on Instagram at @marlisamarasco. Photography is by CameraOff, whose images capture both the wall-mounted configurations and the worn, mask-like transformations.

The project debuted in the SaloneSatellite program, the Salone del Mobile Milano platform for emerging designers, with the 2026 edition as its stage. Positioning the pieces there frames them as collectible design — one-off craft objects with narrative logic — rather than production furniture.

Marasco's pair suggests a direction for young designers at SaloneSatellite: myth as a functional brief, where every symbolic element earns its place through use.