Take a Tour of Our American Design Booth at the London Design Fair

When we first started curating our own fair during New York Design Week almost a decade ago, there was one city’s celebration that kept coming up in our discussions as an inspiration point: the London Design Festival. Why, we thought, couldn’t New York Design Week offer that same local flavor and that same, well-earned sense of discovery?

Well, we’re happy to say that we’ve long since achieved those goals on these shores. But we also knew that when the opportunity came up earlier this year to finally show a group of American designers in London, there was no choice but to say absolutely yes. Invited by the London Design Fair to curate its Guest Country pavilion — with this year’s honors going to the United States — we asked 13 Americans who are doing some of the most forward-looking work in the contemporary scene to show with us.

Some of those 13 designers hailed from our own home base of New York City, but others came from as far afield as Carmel, Indiana; Seattle, Washington; and Long Beach California (plus one lone American expat living in The Netherlands). Some studios chose to show an overview of existing work — we’re predicting an explosion of interest in Bower’s Arch mirrors — while some created an entirely new body of work: Chen Chen and Kai Williams created mirrors, tables, and stands from their experiments with cut stone; Christopher Stuart debuted CAD-inspired shelving units draped in fiberglass and sheathed in automotive paint; and Steven Haulenbeek pushed his resin-bonded sand process in even more interesting directions with a new series of lamps and vases. Check out the works that were on view below (and pour one out for the FedEx customs fiascos that left Iacoli & McAllister and DAMM without anything to show!)

Special thanks to Jimmy MacDonald at the London Design Fair and the whole team at Zetteler PR for making this happen!