Rotterdam, The Netherlands, earnestly.org The American-born Rachel Griffin moved to the Netherlands to attend the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven and never moved back. Her work, primarily made from natural materials, often explores notions of modularity and function. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design is audacious. America has a more irreverent relationship to history than Europe, which gives the work — even when it is not especially new — a feeling of freedom and fearlessness. Those feelings are always exciting. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? The studio has several new products expected to launch with brands in the new year, along with a collection of furniture and lighting for spring. We are looking at themes of texture, transparency, and reflection through a variety of materials and shaping techniques. It is an exciting time and we are really looking forward to showing the new work. What inspires or informs your work in general? Generally, I am inspired by material and functional form. A good example is our recent “Mill” table lamp, which draws inspiration from the dexterity of the basic sphere. Balanced on a hollow cone and connected using gravity alone, the continuous three-dimensional symmetry of the form creates a simple, but limitless, joint with an exceptionally wide range of motion. These kinds of specific discoveries that come from getting to know a shape or material are at the core of my work.

Carmel, Indiana, christopherstuart.com A solo show at The Future Perfect earlier this year revealed what many already suspected: That the heart of an artist beat inside this inveterate industrial designer from Indiana. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? One answer that others have likely given in past years is that American design is about a pioneering spirit. We don’t have a long history of design that establishes a known aesthetic; as a result, we are free to explore. We are free to take chances. It’s about creating something first, then building an audience for it. It’s exciting to be part of this growing resurgence. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I recently showed my new Constructs and Glitches collection with The Future Perfect at Design Miami. It was their first year exhibiting as a gallery, and I was honored to be showing my work. It’s incredibly exciting and a bit unreal for me. As I was cutting my teeth as a designer, both The Future Perfect and Design Miami were life goals. My show with TFP earlier this year was one dream come true. Now this! I’m blown away, and admittedly pretty anxious. I also showed a piece commissioned by Cadillac and Wallpaper Magazine during that same time. The entire idea was based on veneer — something I’ve wanted to explore as Indiana is the veneer capital of the world. Outside of that, I’m beginning to work out several ideas I have. I’m currently obsessed with Glitches at a more monumental scale, and have been creating renderings of them. I hope to see them realized one day. I’m simultaneously thinking about technology and conversely more evidence of the hand with these other ideas. I don’t have any venues lined up for those, but I need to see them realized. What inspires or informs your work in general? Formally, I’d say concept, form, material, process, scale, context, systems; the list goes on. Artistic expression is becoming more and more important to me. I’m becoming less concerned with the practical function of a piece and more interested in self-expression. Emotion is the main function that I’m after. I don’t live in a major design city, and most of my fabricators are in rural areas in the Midwest. As a result, little things on my drive catch my attention like concrete corner posts for … Continue reading Christopher Stuart

New York and Los Angeles, ch-herrero.com Founded by a furniture designer (Adam Charlap Hyman) and an architect (Andre Herrero), this of-the-moment interior-design firm has growing roster of clients (Everlane, Dean & Deluca) and a playful, daring aesthetic. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? In America, architects have to be like cowboys. Designing spaces in the United States requires a speed and agility that is unnecessary in Europe. This pace allows for a constant evolution of new ideas — and it’s exciting. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We have a number of residential projects in New York that will be wrapping up in the coming year, and we are eager to see them lived in. In Marfa, Texas, we will be breaking ground on our first freestanding building, a ranch house. Having thoroughly enjoyed designing a set for the opera La Calisto this past year, we are looking forward to working on another set for the Dutch National Opera, in collaboration with the artist Cynthia Talmadge. What inspires or informs your work in general? We love both contemporary and historical examples of Gesamtkunstwerk. Because of our varied design backgrounds — and the manifold nature of our projects — the intersections of different disciplines are particularly exciting for us. Lately we have been looking at the set designs of Josef Svoboda, the interiors of Carla Venusta, the nightclubs of Lapo Binazzi and The Haus Wittgenstein. In our design process, we like to challenge ourselves to fall in love with what we hate. Sometimes, on Fridays, we go to the Met and look for the piece of furniture that we find most ugly and then try to imagine an architectural space that would make it compelling.

New York, bbtcreative.com Working primarily in plywood, the Pratt grad filters Postmodernism, from Memphis to Enzo Mari, through the lens of contemporary design. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? There is so much opportunity right now for people to quickly call up previous ideas, practices, and theories, learn from them, and make their own new branch in design history. Due to the availability of information, I think the boundaries of design are being stretched further than they ever have before. The interesting thing about “American Design” is that it is huge catchall, spanning from the technology and engineering of industrial processes to a nearly purely artistic practice. In that, I think I’m most excited about the current group of artists who are using furniture design as their reference point, as well as those trained as designers who are making one-off, process-based pieces and installations that are often more conceptual than a manufacturable design. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? While I’m not exactly sure what the next year brings, I continue to have new work and projects to keep me busy. I don’t want to jinx anything that hasn’t happened yet, so…¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What inspires or informs your work in general? The things people make and the processes people come up with to “get it done” when nobody’s looking. Moreso than a final piece, I’m often intrigued by those things made by the designer while still working out a final object. They have such a unique aesthetic; there is something entirely genuine and authentic about the material study someone makes, or the prototype made when still exploring a form.

Millerton, New York, biancolightspace.com Anthony Bianco’s glass work — which encompasses sculpture, lighting, and functional art — takes shape under the influence of a range of sources, from Italian Futurism to the beauty of the Berkshires. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I think American design has yet to be clearly and fully defined. So many of my contemporaries have taken the role of either being the designer/maker/artist or as the designer of mass-produced goods. The historical separation that has existed between mass production versus studio practice seems to be evolving into a more ethical and moral approach to theory practice and production. Maybe one not-so-different precedent is the makers from the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 1900s, where the value in craftsmanship, the handmade, and the beauty of natural materials were paramount. These makers rejected the forms of mechanization that diminished the quality of their livelihoods and trade. During the Studio Glass movement in the early 1960s — with the advent of the small-scale glass blowing furnace in 1962 — glass which had only been previously accessible through European factory settings now became available. For the first time ever the artist/designer could also be the maker of glass without the factory as an institution. American design today represents a shift from the industrialized form of making a product in a large scale to sourcing and producing work locally and in small quantities. To me the value of supporting the local economy is essential in addition to keeping handmade traditions alive while working in a studio setting. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Producing large-scale glass sculptures in addition to introducing handmade furniture to my product line. What inspires or informs your work in general? I am inspired by having my own studio, having the ability to work with unique chemistries for glass making, the mold-making process, the endless possibilities of working with shapes and forms, manipulating light through the medium of glass, and most importantly to hone my skills as a glass maker on a daily basis.

Los Angeles, bzippyandcompany.com In both her design and fine art practices, Ziperstein is constantly reinventing what a piece of ceramic art can, and ought, to be. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? To me, American design is about a focused moxie to break rules in terms of scale, material choices, and stretching new outlets to sell or display one’s work. Having the ability to move between the fine art and design worlds (or the space between design, art, craft), where materials that are traditionally functional have a different use, value, and output. With a conceptual education at Cal Arts, rather than a traditional ceramics technical background – my investment in ceramics is less weighted in showing off technical tricks. Rather it’s about creating a new ceramic silhouette with unexpected processes that excites me. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I’m working on my next collection of large-scale pottery, with a continued investigation into terracotta, rope, and scale, and I’m participating in Rachel Comey’s ceramic event in both Los Angeles and New York City, opening December 5 through the new year. A few projects are still in the planning stages including several hotel and restaurant commissions. This upcoming year I have a solo museum show at UCSB Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design. It will be my first solo show in more than four years, since distinguishing between my fine art practice and my editioned design works. “Fair Trade” consists of new work related to communist propaganda I researched while at the Wende Museum, a repository of Cold War artifacts. Using posters and ephemera as my starting point, I’m creating a dynamic installation that brings together a series of ceramic sculptures — vessels and decorative panels — that borrow from, and manipulate government-sanctioned images of women. These works form part of a faux trade show booth, which is based on specifications for Soviet Russian public information displays and industrial fairs. Complementing the installation are Soviet propaganda posters on special loan from the Wende that inspired portions of the project. What inspires or informs your work in general? The transformation of clay and testing its technical limits informs so much of my practice, from testing how to make a flat 28-inch ceramic slab to making a three-foot leather embossed image with equal pressure and consistency. With both practices, the experimentation of combining soft woven … Continue reading Bari Ziperstein

New York, ashnyc.com The up-and-coming interior design firm — run by Ari S. Heckman, Jonathan Minkoff, and Will Cooper — has quietly been developing an impressive furniture collection as well, marked by clean, almost Shaker-inspired lines.  What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Will: American design, to me, is really about fusion. We are a country that is defined as a melting pot of culture — and our design is an extension of that. We don’t really have a set of rules to abide by or norms to adhere to; the influences come from places near and far. I do think we are a derivative culture and that is okay. Design today is both reactionary and derivative, with nuances that are relevant to culture as it stands now. Access to so much imagery via the internet, social media, etc. has made it increasingly difficult to be unique. On one hand, we have the most unabridged resource at our fingertips, but on the other, the over-saturation of information blurs the line of research and knowledge vs. observation and regurgitation. What excites us about American design is that it offers endless possibilities. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. We typically design out of necessity as opposed to designing for the sake of designing. The brief or problem presents itself in a project and we as a team tackle that and design from there. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We have a lot of projects coming online in the coming year, which is very exciting. Our second hotel (following The Dean in Providence, RI) will open this summer in Detroit, MI. It has been a labor of love for the past two-plus years and we are excited to show everyone what we’ve been working on. It will have 106 rooms and four unique food and beverage spaces developed and designed by us. We also have a very cool private residence coming to the eyes of the public next year — over three years in the making with the most wonderful client. It was a full gut renovation and design of a beautiful space in an infamous neoclassical building from 1927 on the Upper East Side. The last highlight we will share is the launch of several furniture and lighting pieces we have been working on for the past couple of years. … Continue reading ASH NYC

New York, anakras.com The Serbian-born model and photographer, who moves back and forth between design and art, is the author of one of our favorite collections to date, the Slon collection for Matter Made. A new collection in metal and laminate is in the works.  What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? When I think of American design, the first thing that comes to my mind is Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry. When I think of America I think of the large scale; I think of architecture. I see contemporary American design as a mix of international influences because of all the people who brought those influences with them to America. And that’s what’s most exciting about it at the same time. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I’m very happy about a few projects and collaborations that will be launched in the next year. I like to keep it secret until its ready. Lately I’ve been working on glass and laminate pieces and I hope to explore that more in the next year. I’m very curious about applying laminates to glass surfaces. What inspires or informs your work in general? Architecture is what inspires me the most when it comes to shapes and volumes. By that I don’t mean only the masterpieces of the greats; what’s even more inspiring is vernacular architecture in different places in the world. I grew up in Belgrade, Serbia, and architecture was always my big influence. There is a lot of freedom in architecture in that area of the world. People build things that are easy and inexpensive to construct and so they come up with very interesting decisions that result in very unusual shapes and finishes. There are a lot of Communist Brutalist buildings there, which I love, but there’s also a human touch to it because people there tend to freely alter their homes to nurture their needs. So one would add a wall to the terrace and paint it apricot, another one would add a reflective bronze glass to it, the third one would plant a mini garden, so the facade ends up looking like a patchwork. When I traveled to Haiti last year, I was blown away by the metalwork and fences there. I couldn’t stop staring at them. They make these fences that are full of geometrical ornaments and they … Continue reading Ana Kraš

Detroit, aleksandrapollner.com The Polish-born Cranbrook student debuted a furniture line this year that demonstrated a sophisticated juxtaposition of textures and materials. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? It’s a great honor to be named here alongside some highly talented and inspiring peers. I look forward to reading their thoughts on this question, because for me, it raises a lot of complex thoughts around what design is today, around audience and marketplace, and around what is fundamentally American. We, as American designers, are seeking not only to construct what design is today and what our responsibilities are, but what American means and whether it even exists in an ever-more homogenized tech-driven world economy. The transcending power of design, for me, always addressed our humanness and our experience as human beings. What keeps me excited is the human hand — the inclusion of specialized craftsmen and manufacturers in the fabrication process, and small-batch or one-off production. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? The biggest highlight and focus this year will be on projects for my graduation show at Cranbrook Art Academy, which will end up going to New York Design Week next year. I’m also really excited about a few incredible collaborations in the works. To me, collaborations are a creative must, because of the conversations and ideas they fuel and inspire. What inspires your work in general? Concept, material, and form drive my work. I’m currently absolutely inspired by land art and how a site informs a body of work. Shortly after New York Design Week I had gone to Marfa, TX, and in the midst of the desolate desert, its inhumanness, and Donald Judd’s concrete blocks, I experienced the feeling of being in an idea. The desert provides no cultural context, reference points, or any interference with a body of work except for the idea itself and the observer. In an environment where you’re confronted with your own mortality — with the desert representing a death, or transformation — what comes to life and confronts you is you, and the original idea proposed by the artist, the most pure experience of the work. I want to see and find that in my work, too. The conversation and experience would have not existed had I seen the same art in a gallery in New York.

New York, alexpwhite.com A long-time right-hand man to New York interior designer Kelly Behun, White planted his own stake in 2015, launching a mesmerizing solo furniture collection influenced by neo-Futurism and retro nightclubs. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? For me American design is about context, i.e. community, production, and location — the very literal and obvious “how, where, and when” something is made. When the maker/producer/consumer cycle is focused on local economies, communities get stronger, regional aesthetics develop, lots of sharing and collaboration occur and the creative scene becomes really fertile (and tends to have an impact on a much larger scale.) I find this process exciting and positive. I’ve lived in times/places where this was a music scene or an art scene and right now furniture/interior design seems to be having a similar type of productivity. In other words…Sisters Are Doin’ it For Themselves! What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Under the Alex P White label, I’m in the planning stages of two projects: an all-ages Playscape and a collection of mood lighting. Playshroom 3.0 is a modular environment akin to something like upholstered scaffolding, and for my next collection, I’m using LED and neon light to transform sconces into objets d’art (or as I like to think of them, paintings with their own light source.) I plan to show iterations of both projects during New York Design Week in May. In my work with Kelly Behun, I’m super excited about one of our most recent interiors projects. Our client is the chicest: an international collector with exquisite taste and a flair for the bizarre. With Kelly’s keen eye and her passion for the current design scene, the results are truly special; the home is as unconventional as it is traditional. And with this project, having the opportunity to work with such talents as Lindsey Adelman, Apparatus, Cody Hoyt, The Haas Brothers, Misha Kahn, and Thaddeus Wolfe — just to name a few — is one of the best parts of my job. Thanks y’all! What inspires your work in general? ON HEAVY ROTATION • The Cure | Staring at the Sea The Singles 1979 -1985 • Eurythmics | Be Yourself Tonight • China Crisis | Flaunt the Imperfection • Active Child | You Are All I See • Warpaint | Warpaint BOOK STACK • I’ll Never Write … Continue reading Alex P. White

New York, annakarlin.com The prolific New York designer and art director had a sprawling breakout collection this year — she’s basically a one-woman department store. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design to me means two things. First, no rules. As much as the lack of history in this country sometimes frustrates me, it’s also liberating. Second, the myth of the ‘American Dream’ that can sometimes be used to promote a very individualistic and selfish outlook also makes it a country where it’s ok to work for what you want and be openly ambitious, where risk isn’t dirty word. As a result there’s a community of people around you wishing you well and willing to graft alongside you to make it happen. Which means it’s also a place where things are still made, and there’s an amazing network of craftspeople and fabricators still making a healthy living. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? This year we launched our second collection and that has been huge for us — it’s opened so many doors to new clients, projects, and collaborations. Very dull, but until they’re announced I can’t say anything! A big highlight is going to be launch of my capsule collection of fine jewelry — just three rings in this incredible packaging we’ve recently finished working on. Working on something so tiny when I’m used to working so big has been brilliant — it somehow feels a lot more manageable. The logistics are certainly easier! It’s been a real pleasure and somehow cathartic. What inspires your work in general? The mistakes, the experiments, and the art direction side of my business, where we do everything from set design and graphics to installations and events. We’re always tinkering in every medium, and as a result my studio is full of inspiring odd and ends — blobs of paint we were were trying to float in resin, bits of rubber tied up from trying to make a chair cushion for a concept interior we’re working on, sheets of vintage letterhead paper we found in an antique store that’s serving as inspiration for a branding project we’re currently working on. We’ve just hung up a giant mobile we made for a set design job for Fendi — it sits alongside my new fig tree and it makes quite a vision! My team … Continue reading Anna Karlin

New York, apparatusstudio.com Edgy lighting and an appealingly chunky new furniture series made New York’s Apparatus the talk of ICFF in 2015. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I think of American design as a place where we can access a collective design history and a tradition of craft without being burdened by its weight — where innovation and experimentation meet knowledge and craft, with a healthy dose of scrappiness. I think the enterprise is what makes it the most exciting. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We’re working on new collections of lighting that use LED technology for the first time. We’ve been holding out for the right time — we’re so invested in the warm glow of dim incandescent light, and it feels like the technology is starting to be able to address that. We’ll also be moving our entire studio to a new space on 30th Street in Manhattan, combining our showroom, design, and production spaces onto one floor. The space was a school at the turn of the century, and we’ll be occupying the entire 4th floor, which was once the school gymnasium and adjoining classrooms. We’re very excited about the expansion and what it will mean for the daily operations of our studio. What inspires your work in general? As a studio, we’re most interested in what happens when you try to express perfect mathematical ideas in materials that fight that perfection. There’s a tragic quality in the space between the pure idea and its imperfect manifestation that I think lends our work a certain sense of humanness and accessibility.