Over the past two decades, preeminent gallery fair Design Miami has led the charge as a vital platform for the ever-evolving collectible design industry, one forged out of the vintage furniture sector and to complement the fine art market. As numerous proponents have noted, starting in the late 1990s, collectors began understanding the importance of not just showcasing static paintings and sculptures in their homes but rounding out these spaces with functional and semi-functional furnishings that, in many cases, carry the same level of meaning and craft-led experimentation.
In the early days, this branch of an ever-expanding design industry, much like the model of patronage common in Renaissance-era Florence, fostered wild paradigm-shifting ideation: talents pushing the limits of material and application. Though collectible design has veered closer to the aesthetically safe, escapist, and sometimes vapid realm of overly ornate decorative arts in recent years, a handful of galleries and cultural actors have held fast to the market’s original impetus.
Looking to shift the focus back to that mindset and redefine the term collectible design or what was once called art design as “avant garde design” is noted historian, writer, culture maker, and major craft revival proponent Glenn Adamson. As the curatorial director of this year’s Design Miami he implemented the succinct yet inclusive theme of “Blue Sky Thinking” – optimistic ideas that are not limited by current beliefs or societal norms. In many respects, Adamson was brought in to shape this edition with a “looking back to look forward” perspective. This year’s particularly strong showcase shed fresh light on the talents operating in this space that continue to challenge the boundaries of typology, concept, and self-expression.
From the 45 exhibiting galleries and special project Curio displays, Design Milk has identified 10 highlights that embody this thinking in various ways.
Vessels Vespa Floor Lamp by Nader Gammas
Making his Design Miami debut with a dedicated Curio display, Dubai-based lighting and interior designer Nader Gammas unveiled his Vessels collection – a flora-inspired series of ceramic luminaries that represent a marked departure from his proclivity for brutalist forms. The Vespa standing lamp is a direct representation of the especially sinuous metatrichia vesparium mushroom. The one-off piece demonstrates how natural forms – not just those aesthetically rendered in flat pattern – continue to inform the function of designed objects.
Flap Chair by Chamar Studio
Making a significant splash at Design Miami for the second year in a row was Æqou, purportedly India’s first collectible design gallery. A strong sense of reinterpreting the country’s richly diverse craft tradition and openness to cross border collaboration permeated its display yet again, hinting at what’s in store for India’s rapidly emerging creative scene and its potential on an international scale. A stellar standout was Chamar Studio’s ingenious Flap Chair series. Produced entirely out of rubber, these boldly hued settees reflect the potential of this material’s properties in achieving the intended function.
According to the gallery: “Sudheer Rajbhar founded Chamar Studio in 2015 with the purpose of recontextualizing a term traditionally used as a derogatory slang for the leatherworking Dalit community. When a beef ban threatened the livelihoods of the leatherworkers, Sudheer innovatively introduced rubber as a sustainable alternative. The brand stands as an act of defiance, conserving the craft of a marginalized community and using its creations as activism to highlight social injustices in India.” The Flap Chair series is the latest iteration in a long line of designs demonstrating this exploration.
Double Knot Table by Nick Missel
Philadelphia-based designer Nick Missel has shaped much of his practice around the idea of finding new purpose for conventional materials as a form of anthropological expression: translating the American working-class experience in particularly visceral applications. Produced using fiberglass, resin, and automotive paint, the REM Collection Double Knot table – presented by Wexler Gallery – resembles packing foam that has been freeze framed as a solid, elevated furnishing.
Yellow Cubist Vessel by Christopher Russell
For over 30 years, New York-based talent Christopher Russell has been busy evolving his draftsperson-led ceramics practice through the lens of various creative disciplines. His latest geometrically composed vessels – defined by a spontaneous yet methodical application of colorfully painted patchworks – plays on the tension between aesthetics and function. Ceramic containers have been essential since the dawn of civilization. The eclectic Yellow Cubist Vessel – displayed as part of Todd Merrill Studio’s equally maximalist offering this year – perfectly demonstrates Russell’s iterative and ever formally experimental approach.
Silver Chair by Lewis Kemmenoe
Among a number of luxury brands that invent in creative and cultural projects debuted at Design Miami, major Italian fashion house Fendi unveiled a capsule furniture collection by British up-and-comer Lewis Kemmenoe. The works match his deeply research-based approach with the heritage producer’s undeterred adherence to artisanal tradition. The resulting chairs, cabinets, coffee tables, and back-lit wall pieces are meant to be both functional and subversive. The latter is accomplished – as best evidenced in the Silver Chair – in the near-jarring juxtaposition of roughly hewn wood and stone anchored by, and inlayed into, rigidly framed polished metals.
Self Mining Lounge Chair by Jan Waterston
An unflappable purveyor of furnishings and decorative elements that emphatically push the limits of material and typological application, London gallery Charles Burnand presented the Haptic Horizons group showcase at this year’s Design Miami. According to the gallery, the display “explored the future of materials, the progressive use of these elements, and the enduring importance of the artist’s hand in shaping our tactile world.” One of the most striking pieces on view was British talent Jan Waterston’s Self Mining lounge chair; an especially sculptural, almost rope-like design rendered in carved and ebonized ash wood. With this piece, the designer explored the notion of excavation while blending age-old techniques with instinctual processes.
Tundra Freestanding Shelf by Rio Kobayashi
Blunk Space – the particularly active estate of revered California-based studio movement master JB Blunk – mounted a Curio exhibit with commissioned and sourced works by contemporary talents responding to his seminal and innovatively resourceful practice, perhaps best exemplified in his self-built home. Serving as a central anchor and even display element for smaller ceramics and utensils was London-based designer Rio Kobayashi’s Tundra freestanding shelf. The piece was crafted utilizing endemic redwood and in direct reflection of the home’s distinctive architecture.
Robo Lamp by Formafantasma
A match made in heaven some in the know might say, thought-leading New York gallery Friedman Benda has teamed up with foremost research-oriented practice Formafantasma. Both entities share an understanding of design’s potential beyond form and function: a conduit for deeper historical, social, and cultural meaning – even provocation. Produced in cherry wood and LEDs, the Robo Lamp appears straightforward but it, unsurprisingly, signals so much more. “The work explores the relationship between design, the domestic sphere, and the idea of the archetype… embracing rigor and restraint,” Formafantasma co-founder Simone Farresin explains. The gallery is set to host a solo show of new works by the Milan-based studio in spring 2025.
Time Travel Installation by Nuova Group
Fully immersive fair installations are rare at Design Miami, other than those mounted by brand partners. It’s even more unusual to see this type of all-encompassing showcase at industry events in the United States altogether. Changing things up this year was Los Angeles-based luxury design practice Nuova Group, who chose to stage its Curio as a reconstituted domestic interior from 1971 – a moment, for many, that was the last with a true sense of collective optimism for the future. Meant to activate all the senses, the Time Travel installation was conceived with no stone left unturned. Everything from the archival upholstery to the candles and Andrea sconce design – imagined, like the other furnishings, with a contemporary twist – were for sale by order.
A protea lamp I by Jack Simonds
Shanghai and New York-based Objective Gallery chose to frame its booth presentation with work by nine of its current zeitgeist-defining talents. The platform titled the showcase after a David Hockney quote: “All art (design) is contemporary if it’s alive” – a sentiment alluding to the increasingly stratified nature of the industry and the emergence of multiple concurrent trends. Among the illustrious roster of exhibitors was British, Brooklyn-based designer Jack Simonds, who often draws inspiration from biomorphic forms and natural occurrences. Almost as if freeze-framed in its near-decaying state, the A protea lamp is testament to that approach. The one-off design combines natural dried protea flowers with burn out cast leaves from the same flower, burned bamboo, cast bronze and hand carved marble as it solidifies as an otherworldly yet grounded light source. “What nature brings is fire and brilliance,” Simonds describes.
To learn more about this annual showcase and all of its endeavors, visit designmiami.com.
Installation photography by Adrian Madlener.