Los Angeles, carmendapollonio.com We first met D’Apollonio in 2010, when she was running the Zurich fashion line Ikou Tschuss and assisting artist Urs Fischer in New York. But after moving to L.A. in 2014 and diving into her ceramics practice, she’s now known for her ongoing series of sculptural lamps that have a charming, creature-like feel, shown through Friedman Benda gallery. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Being that I’m originally from Switzerland, with an Italian background, American design is a little new to me. In the past I’ve worked mostly in the fine art and fashion worlds. Coming to L.A. about 9 years ago, I really began to be aware of the design culture here. There’s such a diversity of approaches; I really think it’s all about blurring the barriers between craft and art and design. It’s a completely open field in terms of mediums and methods. I’ve always had a hands-on, DIY way of making things — whether it’s with clay or fiber — so the recent inclusion and appreciation for more craft-based work in the design field is inspiring to me. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I started the year with a show here in L.A., at Friedman Benda, which is open until February 4th. I have another show in September at Tobias Mueller Modern Art in Zurich, so I’m back in the studio now working on some new pieces. What inspires or informs your work in general? I draw a lot from art history, from Greek and Roman statuary to Modernist painters to English potters from the ’80s and ’90s. But also song lyrics, architecture, and the body. Regardless of what I’m thinking about, I try to integrate it into my own sensibility — to bring a kind playfulness to the work and not take it so seriously.

New Orleans, bradleylbowers.com Bowers has been developing his highly multidisciplinary practice for over a decade — creating everything from fashion accessories to textiles to ceramics from his studio in New Orleans — but started really making waves in the furniture scene a little over a year ago with a striking collection of paper lamps for The Future Perfect, a Best Contemporary Design award at Design Miami, a string of furniture experiments for Emma Scully Gallery, and a series of sculptural yet affordable lights for Gantri. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design is a nostalgia — always spoken with a feeling of looking back and recalling individuals like the Eameses, or Mies when he was in Chicago, or Gehry in the ’90s. Rarely is America looked at as a source for contemporary design pioneers. Hopefully that’s changing and American design can move beyond its heyday of the ’50s and ’60s and be a space where the weird can roam free again! Even though we’re often left out of the global discussion that surrounds contemporary design, I get excited about the openness of the American design landscape. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? This coming year my goal is to work with more brands and manufacturers, and draw them a map that can take design to some exciting and funky places. I’m also determined to stand my ground more this year, and be confident that I’m on the right track. I’m also dying to design an eyewear collection! I’m speaking that into existence, lol! What inspires or informs your work in general? My work gets informed from so many different spaces, but almost never from the world of design. I glean the most from the field of astrophysics and from reading Einstein’s theories. The way particles move through space and interact with other bodies might inform the behavior of a curve in a design I am developing. Or, a less on-the-nose example would be the way magnetic fields cause particles to group and gather, or repel and spread. I might write a script for that in CAD and see how that behavior can be pulled into the world of furniture and objects.

New York, astraeusclarke.com With their studio officially founded only in August 2022, Chelsie and Jacob Starley of Astraeus Clarke might be the newest talents on our list. Recently moved from Utah and newly settled in Brooklyn, the duo released a series of six lights, each inspired by personal stories or reminiscences from their home state or their adopted borough. Among our favorite of their pieces: the scalloped Lenox pendants and chandelier, which were inspired by a walk in Greenwich Village, and the Alpine lamp, whose V-shaped notch mirrors one found at Lone Peak in Alpine, Utah. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? America is distinct and full of bold contrasts. You can find quiet and chaos, rural and metropolitan, snow-capped mountains and dry desert sand, jazz and hip hop, progress or a reluctance to change. American design is a reflection of the people and the cultural climate. It’s a conglomerate of beliefs, skills, and thoughts. This produces designers who take risks, use history, and envision the future to develop new styles or define new methods of manufacturing. Everything has a stage and everyone can have a voice: Does that mean all American design is good? No. But what excites us is that anyone — an accountant, a plumber, a chef — could wake up and try their hand at making a chair. Their background and experiences might inform their design in a unique way. If the design is good (what is good?) it can gain attention, and no one cares who this person is, their history, or where they came from. Anyone, at any time, can release a beautiful and thoughtful collection as unique and interesting as the ideator themself. We love that American design can be as diverse as the people that populate it. Our personal community of designers in New York are kind, talented, and inclusive, about which we feel very fortunate. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? 2023 will be our first full year as a studio. We are excited to host our first show during New York design week. We are also looking forward to three new original pieces being shown on the Lovehouse gallery floor this January. We have ambitious plans and product launches we are eager to share throughout the year. What inspires or informs your work in general? The feeling of the perfect meal … Continue reading Astraeus Clarke

Chicago, andersruhwald.com We’ve been tracking the Danish-born Ruhwald’s work for almost a decade now, from his ceramic interventions at the Saarinen house near Cranbrook (where he was a longtime head of the ceramics department) to the gloopy planters he installed during the pandemic in the garden of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. As Ruhwald himself points out, he isn’t a designer in the strictest sense of the word. But as his creations have nodded more towards utility vessels — planters, lamps, vases and the like — and the lines have been continually blurred, we thought him a worthy and long overdue addition to this year’s Hot List.  What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I don’t see myself as a designer, so this is a hard one to answer. I work primarily with ceramics and sometimes flirt with utility, but my work rarely serves an actual purpose. At present what really excites me is that the categories are so blurred. At times it can be very hard — if not impossible — to distinguish between practices that self-identify as design, art, or architecture. The galleries are open to showing it all, and so significant but under-appreciated practices are suddenly getting a lot of attention. If anything, it excites me that we are in a period of reassessment and this structural re-evaluation permeates museums, galleries, and art schools, which in turn allows for an interesting cross-pollination. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Right now, I am doing a five-week stint at the Tadao Ando–designed residency Casa Wabi, conceived by the Mexican artist Bosco Sodi in Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s an incredible place situated between the mountains and the Pacific, completed about eight years ago in a remote area. It’s an invite-only residency, and it is a dream to be here. I am spending my time working with the local tile clay in the studio, but also have ample time to write and research. My work will be out at a lot of fairs this spring; I will be showing some pieces at Zona Maco in Mexico City in February, then at Felix Art Fair in LA the week after (both with Moran Moran Gallery) and then I will be doing a larger presentation at Expo Chicago in April with Volume Gallery. In my studio back in Chicago, I am putting the final touches on … Continue reading Anders Ruhwald

Los Angeles, adigoodrich.com The ultimate design Renaissance woman, Goodrich got her start designing window displays for Barneys and Anthropologie, then forged a successful career doing set design and art direction for major clients like Google and Apple through Sing Sing, the studio she shares with her husband. Yet still not content, she branched out into designing interiors for L.A. tastemakers like Dreams and Lisa Says Gah before this year launching her very first furniture collection, Sing-Thing, whose chairs, tables, and lights she fabricates herself in her studio. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? It’s a testing ground. In America, with our limited past and excitement for innovation and change, we’re able to create worlds that have a unique point of view — objects and spaces that don’t need to relate to a heavy past, but can stand on their own. I believe Americans are always a bit punk rock in their approach to creation and design, and that’s what excites me about it. We do things we want to do, we figure out how to do them after the fact, and what’s left are interesting mash-ups of histories and craft. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I’ve just launched my first furniture collection, under the name Sing-Thing. I describe it as picturing a wet Sophie Taeuber-Arp painting that’s fallen on top of a Charlotte Perriand table. Each piece is designed and built by myself in my studio in Los Angeles. After launching that collection, I was commissioned to create 30 pieces for a small hotel in Guerneville, California. After a career of designing sets and commercial spaces, it’s been so exciting to create objects for people to live with. My hope is to continue designing furniture for like-minded people — artists, designers, and friends. With the interior design area of my studio, I’m working on a bar in Yucca Valley, California, called The Gem Room; a small wine shop called Wine + Rock Shop; and a home renovation in Hermon, Los Angeles, with my partner, Sean Pecknold. What inspires or informs your work in general? I’m always inspired by mundane and humble materials and how I can apply them in spatial design in an interesting way. I believe frugality in design makes better work: How can we create a space with the simplest materials while still captivating our audience? I’ve … Continue reading Adi Goodrich

Brooklyn, ubrstudio.com Trained as an architect, Luxembourg-born Umberto Bellardo Ricci first taught at London’s Architecture Association, then moved to Mexico, then launched his first furniture and lighting collection earlier this year at Matter after finally settling in New York. The series embodies his practice of elevating ordinary materials, from steel sheets folded into lamps to tables made from industrial I-beams. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design for me today is actually what it was a hundred years ago, when it allowed immigrants from Europe and across the world to enter a dynamic discourse of what America’s landscape of art and design should be. While Europe is tied to deeply rooted traditions and expectations, American design is more open to experimentation and innovation. While one may say that American design is more crude and direct, coming from a European perspective, it has been surprisingly responsive and fluid and has actually suited me and my work really well. Every day from my studio I look at the poster child of American design — the NYC skyline — that has entered my work like a maquette or a stage backdrop, where my scaleless vertical steel pieces are becoming assimilated to this steel and glass landscape in the background. This scalelesness or ability to jump scales is I think very appropriate to the American design landscape, as there seems to be no imperative scale; it could be anything from a manual craft to a large industrial scale, without any real logic. My show in June with Matter was entitled Dawn, relating to the morning light that many of my light pieces remind of. It felt like a new beginning or maybe even a new chapter in American design, due to a range of elements. I feel very optimistic about a new generation of young and articulated people who will change society as well as design into what American design should be in the future. Exactly one hundred years ago was one of the most exciting periods in art and design of the 20th century, from constructivism to modernism, so I hope that we’re about to witness a very exciting new era in America and abroad. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I’m excited to work on larger landscape pieces, since that’s what all my pieces are asking for —further experiments in scale. I always think of my pieces … Continue reading Umberto Bellardo Ricci

San Antonio, sunshinethacker.com After studying architecture and then spending a decade running a commercial real estate development firm, Sunshine Thacker opted out of her soul-sucking corporate life and pivoted to her true love: ceramics. Looking at her lamps, planters, and side tables, you can kind of tell — they’re chunky, colorful, and unabashedly happy. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Exuberant, risk taking, boundary pushing. It has a tenacious “if you got a problem, yo, I’ll solve it” attitude. It’s irreverent. It asks a lot, especially of materiality. American design is curious. Why not elevate humble material? Why not ask clay to perform in tension rather than compression? There’s a lot of daydreaming and noodling that goes into the creative process of design. What’s exciting is the ingenuity that comes from all the question-asking. There’s a great collection of people making work that’s heartfelt and genuine and original. People who are open to ideas and looking for answers — they’re problem solvers and dreamers. That gives me hope. That’s something that’s bigger than each of us individually. There’s a sort of collective power in asking “what is American design.” It’s the heart of our ethos as a nation. It’s going to be different for everyone. It’s full of the complicated backgrounds, conflicts, joys, pains, and human conditions we bring to our work. It’s not homogenous. True American design is crackling with verve. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I’m usually trying new things and working into new styles. I tend to problem solve in a hands-on way rather than sketching. Right now, things are messy in the studio, as I’m getting through experiments with porcelain lighting — executing it at a large scale while also keeping it thin enough for light to glow through it. It’s been slow going and presents many technical challenges, as the porcelain lacks the structural integrity of stoneware and behaves differently when firing. It often collapses. It’s a long process that requires patience. I’m also working with a looser, less rigid way of making — more coils and less-structured architecturally than previous work. This style is coming together to form a body of work I’m calling “Birth of Medusa.” It’s more organic and figurative than controlled. Making it has been an exercise in slowing down and being more conscious of where I put my energy and how I … Continue reading Sunshine Thacker

San Francisco, studioahead.com We backed into the work of Studio Ahead a year ago, discovering their felted-wool floor chair — which they recently spun into a full collection — before we realized they were primarily an interiors firm, creating stylish homes full of pieces by independent designers like BZippy and Christopher Norman. Founders Homan Rajai and Elena Dendiberia honor their own diverse backgrounds with a practice that celebrates the multi-cultural and handmade. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Elena came to the US from Russia in 2014, and my family came to the US during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. We’re the new generation of design, coming from international backgrounds and knowing not to make generalizations about how people feel comfortable living. We like to ask very simple questions, for instance: How do you like to sit? A question like that has so many cultural implications and design opportunities. Since we’re based in Northern California, we have diverse clients — from South Korea, India, Iran, Russia, the Jewish diaspora. We’re constantly educating ourselves about these other cultures. In terms of our city and what our experience is, San Francisco is weird when it comes to design. It’s known globally for its innovative and progressive thinking, but it appears to mostly reference the past. There’s something to be said about the fact that most of the big interior designers to come out of San Francisco recently represent Eurocentric aesthetics. Our work — our efforts to respect our clients’ diverse cultural backgrounds and to work with local artisans who represent Northern California — feels reflective of what San Francisco is about today. We resonate with humble, locally sourced materials like wool, felt, rough wood, ceramic, and rammed earth. And we deeply respect traditional craft. We like to challenge ourselves by always thinking about how we can marry these materials and craft natively to the region, with new, forward-thinking ideas. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We’re finishing a few of ongoing interior design projects, one of which is a mid-century residence in Hillsborough that has been in progress for the last three years. We brought in Marmol Radziner to collaborate with us on it. To counteract the angular lines of the home, we designed furniture and rugs based on the organic forms of the landscape surrounding it — the oak groves and hills melting into the Bay. The result is a feeling … Continue reading Studio Ahead

New York, serbanionescu.com Despite their Crayola palette, unsteady lines, and frequent use of smiley faces, the objects of Romanian-born, NYC-raised designer Serban Ionescu — which are digitized drawings, CNC-cut in steel — are more bizarre than they are cute or child-like. That’s what really elevates them, and what put Ionescu, who’s soon to have a big solo show with R & Company, on our list. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Being an immigrant in America has many layers. One can either swing between two cultures, or fully adapt. This hinging border space and battle for identity is what I think American design is to me. It’s freedom and reinvention. When I came to America in 1994 at the ripe age of 10, I had to adapt quickly; I lost my accent and my past as soon as possible. Now, as an adult, I try to tap into those lost memories from before I came here, to embrace that past and learn about it. That’s very American to me. American design has always been about that clash of individuality versus the times, working around rules and constantly reinventing oneself, just like an immigrant does. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? In April I’ll have my first large solo debut show with R & Company in New York. In September I have a show in Greece, and at the end of the year, another one in Belgium. I’m also planning a book on my drawings from the last 10 years, but I’m not sure when that will be released. And the second edition of my current book “A Thing On a Table in a House” is soon to be published by Apartamento. What inspires or informs your work in general? My work is very much triggered by all kinds of visual things. I love to look at paintings, sculptures, and films. I love color and the emotional connection I have to it. And my 2.75-year-old daughter Zélie’s laughter and wonderment excites me very much and makes me see life through her eyes. At the end of the day, I’m a drawer. All of my work is inspired by my discoveries in drawings. I start with loose instinctual lines and then strive to capture their energy in different scales and materials. The final pieces are shrines for drawings.

Philadelphia, @seangerstley One of our favorite movements in recent years has been the scaling-up of hand-built ceramics into furniture, and one of our favorite participants is Philly’s Sean Gerstley, whose instantly recognizable pocked lamps and color-block patchwork tables have gotten steadily more ambitious in the past year or so. Not to mention he makes a mean menorah, too. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? For me, American design is a bright wave of optimistic innovation. I’m thrilled about all of the material exploration going on: Designers are rearranging traditional methods and developing new ways of working, and then re-contextualizing where we see the objects and how we use them. As kind of a ceramic purist, it’s been particularly exciting to see how clay exploded in the design field and continues to be a conduit for fresh ideas. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I’m currently working on a few commissions of tables and lighting that will be installed in the upcoming year. Also, I’m looking forward to continuing to work with Superhouse, presenting new work with them at a design fair or two. This winter, I’m building out a showroom in Philadelphia. My practice takes up a lot of space, so I want this showroom to serve as a clean place for client meetings and for an archive of my work — come visit! Finally, I have plans to continue developing my tableware line, called Gerstley. In the Spring, I’m launching into new markets in North America and Europe. What inspires or informs your work in general? I’m really a major clay head, and I’m constantly inspired by how this material and process connects with our humanity so deeply. Thinking about the history of ceramics as a 30,000-year odyssey in which we first married art forms and industry in Paleolithic kilns gets me very excited.

New York, reinaldosanguino.com While Venezuelan-born ceramicist Reinaldo Sanguino’s work is certainly further on the art spectrum than many of our nominees — owing not only to his forms, but to their abstract hand-painted finishes — we know him in the context of his prolific partnership with The Future Perfect, where for years he’s been releasing a steady stream of colorful, one-of-a-kind stools and objects. We’ve always really liked them, but only this year did it click for us that his inclusion on this list was overdue. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Being a craftsman and artist, when I think of American design, the iconic Love and Hope sculptures of Robert Indiana come to mind. I’m an outsider, but the design world has embraced my work and allowed me to navigate the spheres of craft and art while performing on the design stage, and that opportunity to create objects that function within all these disciplines is very exciting to me. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? In 2022 I’ll be working on collaborations with people including artist friends doing ceramics for first time, ceramicists, a florist, and a textile artist. Some are people that I’ve been friends with for years, while others I’ve never met. What inspires or informs your work in general? I draw inspiration from my interactions with my surroundings, whether it’s an urban environment or nature. I’m particularly interested in juxtaposing visual elements to form “material emotions.” I can get inspired by a stain on a wall, a styrofoam cooler, the shapes of trees, or symbols in a construction site. Using elements of craft, design, and art, I employ the medium of ceramics to create objects that are functional, decorative, or for contemplation.

Brooklyn, nifemiogunro.com/ After studying product design at Appalachian State University, the Lyon-born, Nigerian-American designer moved to Brooklyn and quickly became a fixture on the scene, first in a Superhouse show late last year and more recently in Marta’s new Under / Over exhibition. We were struck by the sophistication of her so-called “functional sculptures,” which combine simplicity with small but welcome doses of oddness — a stool with a bisected seat, a maroon bookshelf with a rough stucco finish, a buttercream form that’s somewhere between a bone and a log. Consider us intrigued. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Because American design doesn’t account for all of the country’s moving parts, I find it difficult to define. The widely known tale of design, creation, and discovery is Eurocentric, yielding a monolithic representation of what can even be called “true design.” The very configuration of the United States was built to preserve as much power and dominance for those of European descent, yet American society itself is not homogeneous. Despite this, there is so much about the future of American design that excites me, specifically within Black design. The reimagining of what constitutes Black design, the shifting of narratives, and artists’ ability to share their stories and experience to help ensure a better future are all things that spark both hope and joy for me. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? For a long time design was an escape for me. I would doodle sloppy sketches in meetings and fantasize about having enough knowledge to materialize these ideas. There’s something liberating about living in the imagination. Anything is possible. There’s an innocence that’s left unscathed because it has never been at odds with reality. For the upcoming year, I want to have enough time to ideate and enjoy the process of making as though it’s something I’m unearthing for the first time. What inspires or informs your work in general? There are endless designers, artists, musicians, and authors that articulate the themes I explore in my practice in beautiful ways, but personal experiences and the things I observe in everyday life inform my work. The only narrative I feel confident in telling is my own. The root of my work is to reimagine the way we traditionally engage with objects, question what spaces deserve beauty, and challenge the assumptions we place around functionality.