Welcome to the 13th annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s unapologetically subjective award for the names to know now in American design. Founded in 2013, the ADHL serves as a guide to the US (born or based) talents influencing the design landscape in any given year, whether through standout launches, must-see exhibitions, or just our innate sense that they’re ones to watch.

Considering we’ve recently changed almost everything else about the way we present Sight Unseen to the world, we decided to do things a little differently this year. We’ve whittled our list down to 12 of-the-moment designers, who we’ll be covering both here and on Instagram over the next few days. And we’ve retired the interview portion of the Hot List, in favor of a more straightforward approach. The list also changes organically every year as trends wax and wane; we’ve seen handicraft go in and out of fashion (you could call this the YEAR of craft with how foregrounded it is now), and we’ve seen aesthetics shift from colorful geometry to experiments in untraditional materials to, now, something a little more classic.

To chart these trends for yourself, you can view all of our past winners on our American Design Hot List page, which also serves as an ongoing resource for those who want to learn more about the American design scene and who its key players have been over the years. But first, without further ado, meet our 2025 honorees! And tune in tomorrow for six more, delivered to your inbox in part two.

DEVIN WILDE

Devin Wilde studied architecture at Stanford before founding his Red Hook ceramics studio in 2023. And while the architectural eras that get referenced most often when talking about his wildly popular work include classical (columnar forms, tables that look like vessels for ritual washing) and Art Deco (repetitive geometries), we see a subtle nod to Modernism in his pieces’ delicate visible ribs, X-frames, and structure–turned–ornamentation. In his most recent launch, an 11-piece collection for Design Within Reach, Wilde had occasion to draw upon that era once again, with deeply saturated, high-gloss garnet and cobalt glazes inspired by the palette of the Eameses and Alexander Girard. But part of the appeal of his work, which we’ll see this spring when he collaborates with another former ADHL honoree on a collection of lighting, is that you never know from where his next inspiration will strike.

EMILY THURMAN

Emily Thurman seemed to appear on the scene last spring from out of nowhere. One minute, she was quietly building a successful interiors practice from her home base in Salt Lake City, and the next she was in New York launching Hundō, a spectacularly assured debut furniture collection, realized in collaboration with a handful of friends and international fabricators in rich materials like bronze, onyx, ebonized cherry, and cast glass. Thurman’s work is often personal; for her debut collection, she reworked a daybed that once belonged to her grandmother in horsehair and bronze. But she’s primarily interested in how objects exert their influence upon us — how they affect daily ritual, imprint upon memory, and invite spontaneous interaction. This year will see Thurman debut larger experiments in cast glass, as well as a hardware collection with Petra and her first collection of jewelry, a natural extension of her deeply sculptural practice.

JAMES CHERRY

If you went anywhere that was generally considered cool this year, you probably bathed in the soft glow of one of James Cherry’s lights. The LA- and New York–based maker kicked off the year with a solo exhibition at Tiwa Gallery in New York and didn’t let up from there. Those were Cherry’s delicately-sheathed grids dangling above the schoolhouse chairs at downtown darling Ha’s Snack Bar; his spindly, spider-like floor lamp illuminating a corner of Cabana’s presentation in Milan; and his snail-like spirals complementing paintings by Daniel Evan Long at Duet, a new art fair in NYC last fall. No wonder his lights — which typically pair a conspicuous internal structure with resin-coated fabric and tiny cedar accents — have been commissioned by interior designers from Jamie Bush to Studio Shamshiri. A new collection with Lawson-Fenning is forthcoming this spring.

KIKI GOTI

Kiki Goti was born in Thessaloniki, Greece — a culture where, she says, matriarchs rule the roost — so perhaps it’s unsurprising that much of her work can be seen through the lens of femininity. In one of her first collections, called Buttoned Up, Goti made futuristic aluminum lights fastened with spherical bolts, inspired by women’s accessories from the Victorian era; in another, made from Murano glass, she took inspiration from the Graces, Greek goddesses of beauty and creativity. Her Bells & Whistles collection of furniture and lights, which debuted at Collectible in lacquered walnut and cast aluminum, recalled pleated skirts as much as they did bell founding. And her most recent series of mirrors and lights, launching with Todd Merrill at Bergdorf Goodman, is inspired by a Botticelli painting celebrating seasonal cycles and femininity. This year will see Goti dedicating her practice to the further exploration of natural materials by reimagining traditional techniques with a contemporary, and decidedly womanly, twist.

LLEWELLYN CHUPIN

There’s been a flattening between the worlds of jewelry design and furniture in recent years, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the work of Llewellyn Chupin, who has studios and homes in both New York and Paris. Her Rituals of Adornment collection, which debuted at Collectible last fall, features five pieces made from patinated aluminum and silk, embellished with little flights of folly like a silk skirt covering the bottom half of a three-panel room divider, or silver chains hung with pearls running down the corner seams of two floor lamps. (The effect being very Haim sisters in Louis Vuitton at the Grammys, IYKYK.) This year, Chupin will continue to explore the material and formal language she established with that collection, but at the moment, she says, “I’m diving deeply into the symbolism of votive offerings and how they might be translated into contemporary objects. Sacred places and ritual gestures are recurring points of reference in my work, and this research is currently taking shape through experiments with embedded silver, cast glass, and silk, alongside what has become an abundance of sconce prototypes (but can we ever really have too many sconces?).” Small decorative objects, as well as a residential interiors project in New York, are also in the pipeline.

MADELINE COVEN

Madeline Coven might have the youngest practice on our list — she only recently started working on her own full-time after apprenticing in the studio of Minjae Kim — but her growing collection of pewter sconces and rawhide leather lamps have the sophistication of a designer with twice her experience. Coven grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a place in clear dialogue with the landscape around it, and it imprinted a sort of otherworldly aesthetic on her while teaching her the importance of viewing her work as an ever-changing ecosystem. “I see materials as in flux and part of a broader cycle that relies on all of its parts,” Coven told gallerist Jacqueline Sullivan last year in an interview on the occasion of her Library exhibition. “I aim to have a similar sensibility in my work, not to impose form upon objects and material, but to observe and collaborate with its natural behavior.” Coven sees her work as a kind of alchemy, so it makes sense that pewter — which is able to be manipulated and re-formed on a whim, and has the appearance of a lunar surface — is one of her preferred materials.