This week we announced our 11th annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s editorial award for the names to know now in American design. We’re devoting an entire week to interviews with this year’s honorees — get to know the second group of Hot List designers here (including Frances Merrill of Reath Design, whose midcentury Altadena project is pictured above).

The Perfect Nothing Catalog

Los Angeles, @theperfectnothingcatalog
We first featured Frank Traynor of The Perfect Nothing Catalog almost exactly a decade ago, when he was selling commissioned works by Chen & Kai, Jessica Hans, Cody Hoyt, and more from a shack installed on a subway platform in Williamsburg — already a master of the high/low. His latest project, an exhibition at The Future Perfect called Can Opener of Myself — presumably a Whitman reference — features found objects like flashlights, trash cans, pizza wheels, switch plates, cherry pitters, tongs, and napkin dispensers, all of which have been plated in tin and encrusted with shells or jewels, turning each item into an intoxicating, joy-inducing object. It’s perhaps the most unlikely project to make this list, but what else is the point of design than to make the everyday extraordinary?

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

Other than drone bombs and robotic military dogs, I want to think about the Shakers and Sacred Harp and Prairie School and the hippies and our “folk” arts and craftspeople. I’m always rooting for the people figuring out how to live close to nature and how to offer beautiful things to each other — the kelp weavers and mud silkscreeners and coral castle builders and basement eel-pit keepers.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?

It’s really not in my nature to plan too far ahead. I’m looking forward to spending the winter in LA, letting work and projects and ideas unfold as they go. I want to try to get in to glassblowing, and I want to try to get on The Price is Right.

What inspires or informs your work in general? 

Thrift stores and hardware stores and dollar stores and restaurant supply stores and rock collectors and shell collectors; the Met’s American Wing visible storage; Johnathan Katz’s cabinet at The People’s Store in Lambertville, New Jersey; the worlds of ideas of Sid and Marty Krofft and William Morris and Lloyd Kahn.

Piscina

New York, piscinapiscina.com
Piscina is the wide-ranging project of Natalie Shook, a Cuban-American artist who originally came to New York to study painting but soon discovered her love for carpentry and furniture-making. Shook runs a studio and storefront out of Red Hook in Brooklyn, where she works alongside and showcases the talents of her wood-working, ceramic-firing, and metal-smithing friends. At last year’s ICFF, she won Best New Designer and Best in Show on the merits of a ceramic side table and a modular shelving unit built around a grooved spine. But to our mind, her most interesting work to date is a collection of ceramic and wood sconces, whose decorative wood tenons can be daisy-chained to form an endlessly inventive wall-mounted unit. 

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

Thinking about what defines the American design community — and specifically our practice — the word accessibility comes to mind. In our outer orbit, there’s all of NYC, which gives us access to some of the greatest art, design, and talent in the world. Focusing in, I consider what it means to have our studio in Brooklyn, where we have access to almost any material or service, at almost any time, delivered to our doorstep. Piscina occupies half of a 10,000 sq.ft. building, and my husband runs his architecture practice, Camber Studio, out of the other half. I share Piscina’s studio with quite a few other artists and designers, so we’re fortunate to have access to a community of exceptionally talented individuals who I also happen to love working alongside. We built a caretaker apartment in the back where we live with our two kids and easily transition between studio life and home life. To me, the duality of this experience feels a little wild west and very uniquely American, with accessibility as a strong defining quality.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?

We have a small showroom directly around the corner from our studio, and I’ve been working on curating a few shows for this coming spring. I’m looking forward to working closely with the artists on those exhibitions and working on some collaborations for Piscina as well. We’ll be getting our e-commerce site up and running in the early part of next year, so my work and the work of the 20 or so other artists we work with will be available to view and purchase online.

I’m personally looking forward to rounding out the body of work I’ve been developing. I’ll be working on a couple of exciting column commissions, some new lighting, as well as plans for wall pieces that relate to my new functional works. I’m starting to think about what a show of my own work would look like and what I’d want to see in it.

What inspires or informs your work in general? 

If I’m totally honest, I’m mostly driven to enjoy myself. I feel really lucky to be inspired to make things and I’m pretty determined to get a lot out of myself. I love to problem solve; I relish in the familiar and pleasurable place of a mind searching for inspiration. I think about everything that calls my attention, my love for painting, the impact of architecture, tattoos, book cover art, a friend’s earrings, my kids drawings. I have strong convictions about craftsmanship and how things should be made. I dislike relying on glues and mechanical fasteners and enjoy joining distinct materials with elegant and creative joinery. I can’t say that I always enjoy the process of making from start to finish, but I do really love standing back and feeling pleased by what I was able to accomplish. I love working alongside close friends and am inspired every day by the joy it brings me.

Reath Design

Los Angeles, reathdesign.com
Nobody does wallpaper — and its associated color- and pattern-mixing — quite like Frances Merrill of Reath Design. Would you like a custom sofa upholstered in seven different shades of chenille? How about a living room featuring four different florals? Or a kitchen with lavender cabinets, checkerboard floors, cabana-stripe skirting, and a terracotta stove? Somehow, in Merrill’s hands, it all works. 

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

What I love about American design is similar to why I love working in LA. With the history of Hollywood, there is such a sense of possibility, in that you can really create anything you want from scratch, and there are fewer rules. The architecture is so eclectic, which also allows for experimentation, and an opportunity to pick and choose references in a fun, casual way.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?

We have been slowly settling into our new studio space, which has been a fun and collaborative project. I also moved into a new house this year, so will spend the next many years transforming it.

What inspires or informs your work in general?  

I find I am most inspired by an interesting house and an interesting person, and trying to figure out how they go together, and how the design can inform their lives. I also love to support designers, artists and artisans who are making interesting, unusual things, and finding ways to incorporate their work into our work. And I am continually inspired by old craft traditions that I get to rediscover, and re-introduce into people’s homes, and lives.

Studio Sam Klemick

Los Angeles, studiosamklemick.com
A former fashion designer, Klemick transitioned to furniture two years ago after falling in love with wood-working and realizing she could use her new passion to address some of the more wasteful practices of her former industry. Many of Klemick’s works combine salvaged construction materials and deadstock or vintage textiles; her standout Bell chair, whose pillowy upholstery was inspired by Margiela’s famed 1999 Duvet coat, uses bleached lumber and factory seconds fabric, while her Quilted Side Table makes use of reclaimed Douglas fir. A newer body of work pairs fashion and furniture even more conceptually, with stools sporting giant carved ribbons. After showings in London, Milan, Miami, and a wonderfully sensitive recent joint exhibition with Canadian designer Jeff Martin for Objective Gallery, we’re excited to see where she goes next. 

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

The first thought that came to mind was, I don’t know! I hope American design is something that can be inclusive and free of definition, allowing room for everyone to have their own point of view. Maybe American design is then individualistic? There are trends that ebb and flow, but at the same time I feel like at any moment, depending on what city you are in or what designer’s studio, you could see something you have never seen before.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?

My first plan is to take a minute! The past year has been an incredible whirlwind. I was constantly producing new work, and I think this year I need to take a minute to pause and reflect a bit, but I also already have plans for my next large body of work, so we will see how much pausing I really do. I will also be part of Haworths second Design Lab, I’m super excited for this. The theme this year is sustainability, which ties in directly to my practice. I work with almost exclusively recycled materials, this is something very important to me. Haworth is opening their doors to us to utilize their resources for sustainable material exploration and research. Having never formally gone to school for this I am beyond pumped to have this opportunity to learn from their team and specifically Patricia Urquiola who heads the design lab. Potentially there is also a fashion collaboration in my future that I’m trying to put into the universe, and the rest will hopefully just be small wonderful surprises along the way.

What inspires or informs your work in general?

My background in fashion is at the forefront of what informs my work. My relationship to textiles and proportions — I learned all of that from my experience as a fashion designer. The first thing I ever noticed about people as a kid was the clothes they were wearing. I used to make my mom draw the characters in films that had my favorite dresses on. (She literally had to pause the VCR to do this) I find so much inspiration and reference from films. When I have a theme or concept I want to explore I make myself movie lists and playlists and live in that world.

My work has evolved over the past few years. It started from a fascination with duvet comforters and Margiela’s ‘99 collection, I think you can see it in the upholstery. I was watching a lot of movies about sleep and dreams at the time. The new stuff that I’m making explores my relationship to textiles in a more literal way. I am working with fabric again and draping it over forms, scanning these things and translating them into lumber. With this sculptural approach I am able to express my ideas in a very direct way. On deck is a long list of melancholy films for me. There’s a nostalgia and sentiment I want to begin to explore. Please send recs.