From blockbuster brand collaborations to thought-provoking installations and high-concept furnishings, collectible design’s preeminent fair captures the moment
2023 has been a particularly successful year for Design Miami. After a strong showing in Basel this June, the multi-city fair launched its highly anticipated Paris edition in early October. Anchoring a flurry of activity and robust sales, the event was widely visited and celebrated. First presented in 2005, as the vintage and studio movement market was just beginning to expand into the cultivation of contemporary collectible design, Design Miami has enjoyed consistent growth. As a global authority, the diversified fair, online marketplace, and editorial platform has emerged as much more than a leading salespoint. It’s safe to say that it has also firmly established itself as a cultural arbiter, addressing many of the day’s most pressing topics in fresh and innovative ways. All this has been achieved in a short two decades. Design Miami has long been the champion of material experimentation, conceptual ideation, and personal or collective expression.
“The upcoming 19th edition of our Miami Beach flagship fair this December will continue the momentum of this landmark year,” says Jen Roberts, CEO of Design Miami. “We welcome an incredible line-up of exhibitors across our gallery, Curio, and partner programs. It is a true pleasure to see returning exhibitors, such as Galerie Patrick Seguin, Friedman Benda, Moderne Gallery, and R & Company, alongside first-time exhibitors including Adrian Sassoon, Atelier Ecru Gallery, and Galerie Melissa Paul.”
With noted Berlin-based curator, writer, and editor Anna Carnick appointed as curatorial director for this installment, Design Miami is doubling down on its zeitgeist-surveying expertise. Carnick has mounted numerous exhibitions touching on, in part, the underrepresentation of women talents in contemporary design and other social impact issues. Bringing this perspective into the fold for the 2023 edition of Design Miami, the culture maker has helped program a comprehensive Design Talks series but also been instrumental in selecting the 40 exhibiting entities. This year’s title, Where We Stand, touches on themes of place, community, and heritage—creatives whose work demonstrate future-facing, socially engaging, and narrative-driven design thinking.
In addition to this, major players like bathroom giant Kohler and venerated French institution Mobilier National will mount unique Special Project installations. The former is launching a paradigm-shifting faucet by British multi-hyphenate Samuel Ross with a holistic display. Celebrated New York boutique lighting studio PELLE has been tasked with the outfit of the fair’s collector’s lounge.
From investigations in form, color, and material application to the reinterpretation of age-old craft traditions, Effect highlights 10 standout pieces on view at this year’s Design Miami.
New resin works by Fracture Studio, Tuleste Factory
New York’s Tuleste Factory is staging its immersive Curio display around the theme of space exploration and humanity’s unfettered ponderance of parallel universes, drawing inspiration from the luminosity and vastness of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Skin I Live In.
“The Zone is a metaphorical space that proclaims innovation and appeals to concentration and motivation through the prism of luxurious comfort,” says gallery co principal Satu Greenberg. Demonstrating this preoccupation are Fracture Studio’s latest crystalline resin furnishings and geometric square wall panels.
Zebra & Ostrich by Tjitske Storm, Todd Merrill Gallery
Merging age-old craftsmanship with state-of-the-art technology, Dutch fiber artist Tjitske Storm imbues her expressive tapestries with graphic composition. On view at the fair with New York-based Todd Merrill Gallery, the geometric wool and metal chain Zebra & Ostrich piece derives from her experiences traveling through Angola and South Africa, but also her exploration of symbiosis and fascination with the concept of “rewilding the world.”
Cartela Light Sculpture, Gear Collection, Héctor Esrawe, Atelier Courbet
New York’s preeminent purveyor of high-craft design, Atelier Courbet has just begun to represent major Mexican architect and designer Héctor Esrawe. Showcased as part of the gallery’s immersive Primal Nature group installation—an exploration of organic material and shapes informed by Earth and the human body—the polymath’s seminal Cartela Light Sculpture takes pride of place. With the illuminated work, Esrawe translated the structure of honeycomb cells in bronze and aluminum. He often seeks to infuse common forms and materials and unexpected functions.
Canopy Chandelier by Jean-Gabriel Neukomm, Charles Burnand Gallery
New York architect Jean-Gabriel Neukomm often imbues his interiors with a sophisticated layering of materials and detailing. It’s with that same approach that he developed the Canopy Chandelier for London-based Charles Burnand Gallery. Produced using hundreds of pieces of mica—the finest transparent mineral silicates that have been crystallized—the work comes together to create an umbrella-shaped cloud refracting light in a pixelated fashion.
Space Relics by Jeremy Anderson, Gallery FUMI
London powerhouse purveyor Gallery FUMI has just signed New York-based ceramicist Jeremy Anderson—cofounder and former co-principal of lighting brand Apparatus. To commemorate this new partnership, the gallery will showcase a number of Anderson’s totemic Space Relic designs. Indicative of the talent’s mastery of composition and intuitive, process-driven form-finding, the piece takes on a playful quality—as if artifacts from a future civilization. The works are feat, pushing the limits of clay to new heights and proportions.
Three Hits by Sean Gerstley, Superhouse
For its Curio display, New York maverick platform Superhouse teamed up with British luxury paint and wallpaper manufacturer Farrow & Ball to highlight the growing interest in fiber arts; a medium that increasingly lends itself to self expression and cultural demarcation. Like with Sean Gerstley’s patchworked Tile Block Chair—developed with Maharam fabric—that reflects his unique ceramic-tiled furnishings, there’s a potential for translation and challenging convention through visual interplays.
The Subversive Hand showcase will take an expansive view of the theme, echoing Carnick’s reasoning for this year’s edition of Design Miami: “Objects are anthropological markers, reflections of the human experience. Through materiality, process, and form, design pieces tell unique stories—tales of time and place, of makers, of communities, and of values.”
The Grapes by Autumn Casey, The Future Perfect
To commemorate its 20th anniversary, bicoastal gallery The Future Perfect chose to commission a whopping 130 new works by 18 of its artists and designers. Presented in a tall cabinet of curiosities-style display—furnished by Swiss manufacturer USM—the showcase comes together as a comprehensive survey of groundbreaking design. Within the richly diverse offering is Autumn Casey’s The Grapes table luminaire; a seemingly molten riff-on a classic Tiffany lamp.
Faux Baroque by Kostas Lambridis, Carpenters Workshop Gallery
For this year’s edition of Design Miami, bluechip platform Carpenters Workshop Gallery is paying homage to Dutch Design and Design Academy Eindhoven—the highly influential, experimentation-driven school that trained many of its talents. Among the roster is Greek-designer Kostas Lambridis, an expert at combining found discarded elements and sumptuous materials in cohesive and emotionally-expressive compositions. Case in point: the Faux Baroque coffee table.
Caterpillar by Raise The Moral
Presented as part of Los Angeles-based design studio Raise the Moral‘s especially sensorial BECOMING FAMILIAR Curio showcase, Caterpillar (above and at article head) is a one-off lounger that, through parametric design, emits kinetic soundwaves. The coil-formed furnishing facilitates tactile and audible engagement when activated by a user.
Console, Panna Collection by Florence Louisy, æquō
Established in 2022, æquō is a new Mumbai-based gallery and limited edition furniture producer. As evident in creative director Florence Louisy‘s inaugural Panna Collection—debuting at Design Miami this year, the newcomer platform seeks to establish a dialogue between contemporary design—architectonic and pared-back furnishings—with age-old Indian artisanal savoir-faire: the harnessing of burnt enamel specific to Alibag, oxidized copper perfected in Jaipur, and meticulous felting achieved in Kashmiri. Works like the sleek yet evidently hand-finished Console stands testament to this meeting of two worlds.
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