New York, eggcollective.com
A Brooklyn furniture studio whose founders — Stephanie Beamer, Crystal Ellis, and Hillary Petrie — have backgrounds in architecture, art, and woodworking.

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?
As American designers, the fact that the greater term “American design” exists means that we’re fortunate to a part of something bigger: a movement and a community that’s changing how things are made and where they’re made. Similar to the idea of slow food, this movement has the power to alter how objects are understood, viewed, and consumed in contemporary society. The community involved in executing and sharing American design is encouraging for the future and evolution of this movement. Each year we are meeting new people who are making incredible work, and also experiencing new venues for exhibition that didn’t exist in years past. It’s great to see that there’s an energy building behind American design that’s creating an environment prepared to support the continual development of new talent and ideas.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?
This is going to be an exciting year for Egg. We’re currently renovating a space on the corner of Hudson and Spring where we’ll open our first showroom this winter. The space will showcase our own work alongside a small selection of artists’ works. We also have teamed up with Design Within Reach and just released our first licensed product — the Harvey Mirror, a delicate brass armature that holds a circular mirror.

What inspires your work in general?
Recently we’ve been going back to our roots (all three of us studied architecture in undergrad) for inspiration. As a trio, we’ve been interested in the simple/sculptural forms found in Ancient Roman Architecture and early Brutalist Architecture — especially the Roman aqueducts, the concrete dome of the Pantheon, and just about anything by Paul Rudolf or Le Corbusier. We believe this interest can be seen in our newest collection of furniture. For our 2014 Collection, we combined five of the most elemental building materials (stone, wood, bronze, leather, and glass) with five of the most basic shapes (circle, oval, triangle, square, and trapezoid). Many of the pieces in the collection are made of thick, solid materials that are combined by stacking or slotting. These fundamental ways of making are offset by the collection’s rich, earthy materials palette, and by the impeccable craftsmanship of the work.