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Smaller Design Fairs Just Keep Getting Better — Our Hits From Lisbon Design Week Are Proof

Our inboxes tend to be harbingers of the insanity of the design world calendar each year — first we’re buried in emails about Milan starting in February, then comes the deluge from New York Design Week, and then, just when we think we might have a shot at catching up, the Copenhagen blitz begins. As our art world friends know all too well, the growth of fairs and festivals in recent years is equally a blessing and a soul-crushing curse; you can circle the globe now trying to see it all with nary a night resting your head on your own pillow. But one thing we can say about the relentless fair circuit is that in the 20 years that we’ve been doing this, the content is actually getting better — it used to be that smaller cities staged events that seemed idealistic and maybe a little quaint, lacking in real design gravitas, but then folks like Stockholm, Melbourne, and Copenhagen raised the bar, and now here we are, having flown all the way to Lisbon last week with a hint of skepticism only to be pleasantly surprised at our discoveries.

Lisbon Design Week, which tracks alongside the ARCOlisboa art fair, is now in its fourth year, and like many of our favorite events, it revolves not around a fairgrounds but around individual venues all over the city — more than 80 of them, to be exact. While it was founded by a Belgian curator, funny enough, by the name of Michèle Fajtmann, LDW specifically aims to highlight not only Portuguese design but the country’s robust history of craftsmanship, which is part of what makes it so compelling. Remember all those fairs in the early 2000s where you’d go all the way to some exotic locale just for them to tout, like, a Marcel Wanders invitational? This isn’t one of them; the talents featured in today’s best-of roundup are entirely local. Check out our top picks from Lisbon Design Week below, which make the case for a Lisbon-Copenhagen circuit next year, perhaps.

Narciso Collection by Alan Louis

Alan Louis is French, and based primarily in Paris, but his production workshops are in the Portuguese countryside of Ribatejo, north of Lisbon. His new Narciso collection, shown above and at top — launched at one Lisbon Design Week location as well as at Lisbon By Design, a totally separate but simultaneous mini-fair that showcased work from more than 50 makers focusing on craft — was a total knockout, featuring monochromatic ceramic mirrors, lights, tables, and wall panels with classical floral motifs inspired both by Ribatejo’s landscape and by ancient palatial architecture. The sleeper hit, though, was the series’ complementary Espírito armchair and sofa, which matched muted gold upholstery to a “burlwood” frame that was actually made entirely of ceramic as well, glazed to resemble knot patterns. The two presentations cemented Louis as one to watch. Photos: Fanny Leselbaum and Claudia Rocha

O Longo Adeus by Main Edition

Main Edition is the furniture and ceramics practice of designer Victoire de Lencquesaing, who’s also based between Paris and Lisbon; for Lisbon Design Week, she commandeered her own personal home and turned it into the exhibition O Longo Adeus, showcasing her designs, pieces by her artists and designer friends (such as Claire Duport, who made the pink mesh outdoor sculpture shown above), and vintage Portuguese furniture collected by dealer João Cabaço of Stood Design. A personal favorite were the two Starck-esque maroon club chairs shown above, which were actually the last two in a cache rescued from a closed-down Portuguese nightclub. Chic. Photos: Ariel da Mata

New Collection by Maison Intègre

Inside the tiniest showroom were the biggest delights — new textiles and wall reliefs by Maison Intègre, a Lisbon-based furniture and lighting studio founded by Ambre Jarno that makes all of its wares at its own bronze casting foundry in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Jarno set up shop in the West African country in 2017 after spending two years living there and falling in love with its craft practices, and has since produced designer editions there by the likes of Marian Mailaender, Pia Chevalier, and Brendan Ravenhill. The new editions launched during Lisbon Design Week were designed by Rachel Marsil, whose “Scenes from Everyday Life” (the little wall pictorials above left) I would have certainly whisked away in my suitcase if I had the budget! Photos: Matilde Travassos and Timothee Chambovet

Wovenware by Lia Raquel Marques

Lia Raquel Marques had work at two large group shows — one of them a Portuguese craft exhibition held at Arquivo Aires Mateus, the other by a collective of designers who all claim roots in former Portuguese colonies — but I zeroed in on her pieces almost immediately. They’re part of her series Wovenware, which “reimagines basket weaving techniques by blending past material traditions with contemporary ‘plastic-ware’” — in this case, made from ceramic — that “references African woven textiles, basketry and colorful plastic objects found in street markets.” Marques was born and raised in Angola, studied at the RCA in London, and is now based in Lisbon. Photos: Ariel da Mata and Sight Unseen

Integrity of Form by Luso Collective

Another Lisbon design collective, Luso, won the exhibition venue lottery, so to speak, when they got to show inside the chapel of a stunning 18th-century Baroque and Neoclassical church called Basílica da Estrela. Thirteen different designers showed furniture pieces, with highlights including a cabinet with Rorschach-like tree-bark inlays by Dublo Studio, a brutalist yet cheerful metal console by Andre Teoman, and a chic, more understated ribbed-wood bench by Thayra Correia. Generally speaking also just happy that design collective culture is still thriving, especially in smaller cities where a larger voice can amplify impact. Photos: Irina Boers Mamachado

Residence by Further Ther

Partners in life and work, the two designers behind the ceramic and wood furniture studio Further Ther — Natasza Grzeskiewicz and Tomás Fernandes — turned their entire home into a showroom for Lisbon Design Week. It was partly a practical way to show off their new and old pieces all together in a controlled environment, like a new steel-base low-slung sofa and a monumental yellow ceramic coffee table, but also partly a way to show off their more contextual point of view in an effort to snag potential interior design projects. One highlight not shown here was an epic custom wood-and-stone kitchen that you can see a peek of in this Instagram post; I’d maybe add some rugs, but the point of view was definitely strong! Photos: Irina Boers Mamachado

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A scene from Lisbon By Design, featuring a chair from Bernardo Barros, embroidery from Seda e Companhia, and a wall lamp by A.D.U. Studios.

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Daniela Franceschini of our favorite Lisbon interior design firm, Quiet Studios, invited the public into her offices, which she styled out with both furniture of her own design (tables shown here) and collectibles from her partner’s stash — he’s the vintage dealer and designer behind Barracuda Interiors.

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Martinho Pita Studio showed the most gorgeous fused-glass table and benches at Lisbon By Design, but there weren’t great photos of the whole thing; here’s a detail shot of the bench.

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Ditto this collection at Lisbon By Design, by furniture designer Kylie Marie and artist Amelia Dennigan, who teamed up not only on wood furniture, an upholstered daybed that’s hard to see here, and a dramatic fabric ceiling lamp with pretty metal stars around the top (not pictured), but paintings by Dennigan as well.

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT:

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Victoire de Lencquesaing of Main Edition, mentioned above as well, also released her new Poing Poing lights during the show — available as sconces, table lights, and larger wall lights, they use hand-like metal anchors wrapped around cast glass diffusers made by local glass artist María Renée Morales Lam.

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Ceramic artist Maude Téphany showed a series of table lamps at Lisbon By Design that look like they’re made from 80s bedspreads but are, in fact, glazed and textured clay.

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Another ceramicist, Jeremy Bellina, put on a terrific exhibition of vessels and tables inside the showroom of textile artist Flores Studio, and while we didn’t get photos of the full show, this ceramic table — with a glass top also by María Renée Morales Lam — was our favorite of his pieces.

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More glassware, in this case large vases by Emmanuel Babled, who installed a sprawling show of his work inside the showroom of tapestry maker Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre, also curating a selection of their wall hangings from the mid-20th-century to now to display.

News

Olivia Cognet has taken over Jacques Couelle’s 1964 Dragon Hill Residence in France for “Inhabiting the Landscape House,” on view through November.

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Ceramic artist and designer Olivia Cognet, who’s based in the South of France, has two big shows on this summer: one solo show at the Brussels gallery of Objects With Narratives, where she’s reinterpreted the city’s iconic Manneken Pis fountain in abstract black ceramic, and one in a sculptural 1964 Jacques Couelle house called Dragon Hill whose sloping white walls echo her own creations. Located outside Cannes, the house has hosted artists’ residencies for the last few years, and Cognet created all the pieces for the show there, to be site-specific to the space. It’s on view by appointment through November, while the OWN show closes September 6.

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If you’re in New York this summer and looking for excuses to get out of the city, the Nomad design fair that usually takes place in spots like St. Moritz and Abu Dhabi is landing, for the first time, in the Hamptons June 25-28, where it will take over the Watermill Center. Object & Thing will have a special presentation there, along with the usual roster of galleries like The Future Perfect and Gallery Fumi, and tickets are free. The grounds are quite beautiful, too, if you haven’t been.

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Amazing group of artists and designers in this benefit auction hosted by Artsy and the ACLU, to benefit immigrant legal defense. There’s a benefit event happening next Thursday in Tribeca in New York, but you can also make a donation, or bid on the auction starting June 9. Here’s the full list of participants, which includes Shane Gabier, Maia Ruth Lee, Colleen Herman, and more. It looks like the Artsy auction page isn’t up just yet, but you can watch this page for more, or follow the project’s IG account.