Brooklyn, sophieloujacobsen.com Sophie Lou Jacobsen has made our Hot List once before, for her furniture partnership with Sarita Posada, Studio Sayso. But Jacobsen’s solo career – which so far consists of wildly viral experiments in colored glass but will soon branch out into furniture – absolutely exploded this year. Does an Instagram shop even exist if it doesn’t carry Jacobsen’s Ripple Cups?  What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? To me, American design mirrors the eclectic nature of America as a whole. It’s such a large, young country that is made up of so many different backgrounds; cultural rules and norms don’t seem to apply here in a broader sense and I think that is reflected in design. You can see each individual designer’s personality through their work, rather than a school, or a movement. That creates a lot of individual expression, originality and exploration. But I also find that American design is entrepreneurial. I think that if I had stayed in Europe, my design career would look very different right now. I probably would have tried to find some more traditional paths to “success” and I’m not sure that I would be running my own studio. The lack of a bigger production industry here creates a new sort of creativity, a hustle to make this career path work, that opens the field up to anyone who has the stamina to see it through to the end. I find that particularly exciting!  What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?  Before the pandemic shut everything down, I was planning to delve into more furniture and lighting. But then all the design fairs got cancelled and workshops closed, so all of those projects were put on hold. Instead, I was forced to spend more time focusing on what I already had going, this homeware collection that was gaining momentum and interest. And in the end, I’m really happy to have taken the time to do so. I feel like I’m setting up a more solid path that I can use to grow in different ways down the line, but that I may have spread myself too thin if I hadn’t taken this time to build it up properly. So with that in mind, I plan to spend this year growing this collection into a brand, and adding more variety in terms of materials and product offering. I’m hoping to make new connections … Continue reading Sophie Lou Jacobsen

San Jose, CA; soft-geometry.com Soft Geometry founders Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhary both grew up in India but went to art school in the States, where they’ve built up a practice dedicated to pursuing ideas about softness — everything from materials to scents to sounds. Those ideas are most obvious in our two favorite pieces of theirs — a fluffy, yarn-covered chair and their gently curved translucent Elio light, a major hit from our Offsite Online show earlier this year. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? As rather recent immigrants to America, hopping from Kochi–>New Delhi–>San Francisco and conducting all parts of our life and work from opposite ends of the world, we rarely fit into the umbrella “American,” yet American design now feels strangely familiar. It has been our platform, the worlds’ stage, where — as two twentysomething kids on visas — we could share our piece. It has meant the opportunity to come from a 4,000-year-old culture, draw, interpret, break the rules and retell its age-old crafts and traditions in our own deeply personal way and present it to an audience willing to see and listen, without the weight of that history. There is the romantic ideal of America as the confluence of different stories, perspectives, cultures and people. What is most exciting is that every year, especially this year, there is dialogue, intention, and hope to broaden the types of stories and aesthetics celebrated in the American design landscape. This encourages bolder deviations from the norm and helps us get closer to that ideal. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Well, first off, 2020 turned out wildly different than what we had planned for! But despite the projects that were put on hold, the Elio series, launched at Sight Unseen’s Offsite Online, was a breakthrough for us both in terms of stepping into lighting and arriving at an exciting texture and translucency with resin — which was a new material for us. We aren’t quite done playing with it and look to expand the line next year into a collection of small home objects. The other “plan” or hope is to get back to India. We have been studying the history and techniques of two old-time Indian craft traditions and had started workshops with an artisan cluster in 2019 to learn the process and build out some in-the-works furniture ideas with them. A lot … Continue reading Soft Geometry

Brooklyn, simonebodmerturner.com A lot of designers right now are creating organically shaped, monochromatic vessels from clay, but something about Simone Bodmer Turner’s Valentine Schlegel–inspired pieces strikes a nerve. Bodmer Turner isn’t just designing, she’s world-building. And in her Brooklyn studio, her aesthetic extends all the way from the curved plaster walls to the furniture — a precursor, perhaps, to the ceramic furniture collection she’ll be launching next year. What is American design to you and what excites you about it? I’m really excited that there’s been a resurgence of interest in craft as a crucial component and extension of design in the last few years. More and more clients want to know the process of creating their piece and the history of the medium. This gives me a lot of hope that we are really connecting to the objects we surround ourselves with, and that people are making personal choices that resonate with their own stories. I also love seeing more designers keeping production in-house, or working with a small unit of skilled craftspeople to create their collections. This also feels like a re-centering of the personal, and staying small. Lastly, I get really inspired by seeing the walls between craft/design/and capital A art break down a bit. I love seeing designers dabble across them, as they are boundaries I’m also interested in pushing and re-defining in my work. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? A lot of exciting new projects that smatter all over the areas we work across. We are currently tackling a residential project, our ceramic furniture will be going to market for the first time, and we have a couple of multidisciplinary collaborations that I’m really excited about, as well as prototyping some pieces in materials other than clay. In my personal work, I’m intending to really focus on getting back to traditional firing methods, and pushing myself out of my comfort zone in my sculpture and really examining surface. What inspires you or informs your work in general? In terms of process: Traditional craft and the art of hand-making objects and utilitarian pieces from natural materials available locally to you. In terms of aesthetic: biomorphic, fluid, forms that emanate the cavernous flowing qualities produced by erosion over time. Rocks, bones, shells. The playfulness of kinetic forms, the surprise element of hidden elements worked into furniture pieces.

Los Angeles, ryanpreciado.com A Central California-bred designer of Chumash Native American and Mexican heritage, Ryan Preciado makes work that references both identities — highly lacquered pieces that nod to the car culture he grew up with and mindful, built-to-last pieces that remind him of a childhood spent with his Native American grandmother. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? That phrase, “American design,” feels like something that will never make sense to me — in the same way defining “American“ for me is a constant conversation. If I’m being literal, the first thing that comes to mind is cars and rock and roll, and a sense of being naively optimistic. If I’m talking about my own approach, it’s both referential and also the curiosity that drives an idea. But what excites me about exploring “American design” is the thought of making something disarming and inclusive. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?  An exhibition I curated for South Willard gallery in Los Angeles, called “Down Hearted Duckling,” will be ending in the beginning of 2021. I couldn’t ask for a nicer way to start the year off; I‘m really lucky to have had the opportunity to organize that. Throughout my life, I’ve been culturally trying to piece myself together — my heritage is Chumash Native American and Mexican — and I was fortunate enough to give that opportunity to others. To explore themselves and be proud of where they come from and who they are, as I have through the five artists I chose: Diana Yesenia Alvarado, Mario Ayala, rafa esparza, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, and Alfonso Gonzalez Jr. I also just got a new studio where it will be a sort of appointment-only showroom in the front. I’ll be busy filling that up with current and new pieces of furniture. I have zero furniture right now, which is funny being that it’s the main thing I make. I have to make everything from the sofa to the doorknobs. I’m looking forward to it. It should start to look like something within the next couple months. Lastly, I’ll be working on a show for Canada Gallery that’s taking place towards the end of the year in New York alongside a friend and artist, Matt Connors. Since the day I met Matt, he’s always been really generous with his knowledge and has also been very encouraging. I’m honored that … Continue reading Ryan Preciado

Brooklyn, pieceshome.com A trio comprising a married couple and their best friend, Pieces operates under the idea that “great design doesn’t have to be so serious.” With their furry teddy-bear chairs, tables inspired by sporting courts, and squiggly rainbow rugs, the studio wants to push people to take more aesthetic risks in their interiors — a proposition they underscored recently by opening their own wildly colorful rentable vacation home. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Despite 2020 shining a light on the systemic inequities that pervade all facets of American society (even the design world), there exists a culture of ambition in America that seems unique to our way of upbringing. We collectively believe in ourselves. We are convinced that if we work hard enough then we can build a business or a brand out of our ideas. So the result is a richly diverse landscape of design. As social media has granted us tools to create and to engage our audience, we are all granted a lane to design what we want to design with the confidence that we can bring that design to market. We have the tools to give our ideas life. We have courage to try things that blur the lines between furniture and art, product and content. It’s exciting to be a part of such a creative and diverse ecosystem of designers, artists, and makers, especially at a time when things are evolving so rapidly. It’s an amazing feeling to have found an audience that supports what we create. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We have ambitious plans to expand our “Pieces Homes” collection in ’21 and beyond. Pieces Homes is a division of Pieces that buys and remodels homes to become design-centric vacation rental properties in which all of the products contained in the homes are available for purchase. We launched our first Pieces Homes concept at the beginning of 2019. While the timing was definitely weird, it ended up being a super successful launch. So we look forward to getting home #2 open by the end of next year. We’ve also been slowly figuring out how to work with retail partners. When we launched Pieces in 2017, we didn’t have a plan to work with retail. Honestly, we didn’t exactly know how to make it work. Designing and custom-making product to order is an expensive process. Figuring … Continue reading Pieces

Providence, Rhode Island, serrastudio.com In a year where paper pulp was the “it” material in the furniture world, Mike Ruiz-Serra was our favorite new homegrown discovery (so much so that we put him in our 1stdibs store). Whereas some of his pulp-obsessed peers lean more towards the artfully weird and misshapen, the RISD grad keeps things smooth, elemental, and chic. Plus, he’s committed to only using non-toxic ingredients and natural dyes. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design is characterized by a profound sense of optimism and ambition. At its best it breeds self-sufficient designers who have a great level of control over their output. At its worst it creates a material culture rooted in overconsumption and trend-chasing. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? As of now I’m exploring some new materials and processes. I’m not trying to rush anything though. I have some exciting new work coming out soon, and I’m looking forward to moving back to New York in May. What inspires or informs your work in general? Growing up on the internet and knowing how to navigate it has played a big role in my practice. I enjoy using the internet mainly as a source for information, and not necessarily as an outlet for my work to be experienced. Although my work is largely inspired by information from the internet, I try to keep things tethered to reality by sticking to handmade processes and incorporating organic textures that are best experienced in person.

Los Angeles, kalonstudios.com Kalon was founded in 2007 when Michaele Simmering and Johannes Pauwen couldn’t find a sustainable crib for their new baby, and for awhile that crib was their calling card. But this year, they truly hit their stride with a Judd-esque collection of pared-down wooden living room furniture that made good on their goal to design “things that are the most essential versions of whatever it is we’re creating.” What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? You can’t talk about American design without talking about American infrastructure. The United States is a big-business economy. Production and manufacturing here are set up to work at a massive scale. It’s not geared for smaller design studios. Europe, for example, has a completely different and more diverse industrial model which can accommodate and support experimentation. Culturally there’s a different approach. Look, for example, at what was happening in the ’90s and early 2000s when Europe saw a bloom of interest in design: The Droog movement happened, you had the Bouroullec brothers, the Campana brothers, Newson, etc. Companies were hiring designers for their unique aesthetic or point of view, having them design their version of a teapot or chair. This created star designers whose star power was then leveraged by industries to promote new and innovative materials. At the same time in the United States very little was happening, designers were fairly invisible. In the United States, the barrier to entry is high and expensive, designers are essentially locked out of industry. So American designers have to be incredibly self-reliant. They also have to be entrepreneurial which is interesting. Without the support of large-scale industrial infrastructure where there are resources to invest in innovative materials and processes, American designers have to figure out how to work within the constraints of either what they can build themselves, or build with a much smaller and less-sophisticated infrastructure. This is why you often see designers seeking out more traditional manufacturers. Because it’s with these (sometimes very old) manufacturers that you can find a willingness to experiment. So American designers often end up having to find ways to express themselves through traditional materials and techniques. I find this fascinating because designers end up using these very old and antiquated methods of production in new and interesting ways. Two ways you see this playing out in American design are in the rise of the Maker movement and in collectable design. With … Continue reading Kalon

Brooklyn, maryamturkey.com We usually wait a year or two before we put new designers on this list, but when we discovered Maryam Turkey’s recent furniture while checking in on past participants of the Object Permanence exhibition series, we knew she was a must-have. In just three years since graduating from Pratt — and 11 since her family came to the U.S. as Iraqi refugees — she’s developed a body of sophisticated sculptural work that blends her design education with her background as a painter. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design is about storytelling. Whether telling a story through a material process, form, aesthetic, production methods, or color, stories are what make each designer unique. What excites me about American design is that I can celebrate my true self and express that through my work. I have the advantage of gaining inspiration and seeing things from more than one perspective, since I lived half my life in Iraq and the other half in the USA. My aim is to contribute to the design community a unique taste and to keep telling stories through my work as I experience them. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I’m currently an artist in residence at Silver Arts Projects at the World Trade Center, where I’m working on a series of sculptural paintings as an extension of my Oikos stools that were launched during the Inside Out show in late October. I’m excited to announce my collaboration with EQ3 to launch my Uphold collection in stores by 2021. I’m also working on a piece for a show about Beirut called “Colors of Lebanon.” The show will go live virtually in early December, and all the proceeds will fund disaster relief efforts in Beirut following the August 4th explosion. What inspires or informs your work in general? I tend to jump between multiple projects as I’m inspired by many things, including current events, happy accidents with materials in the studio, and returning from trips full of fresh ideas. The past two years I’ve been particularly inspired by materials and textures. I combine multiple ingredients to make my own materials, like hand-built clay with a reflective finish. My old work always inspires my new work. Whenever I’m working on a piece, I think of a new piece that excites me even more. It’s an endless — and exciting — cycle.

Hudson, New York, likemindedobjects.com RISD alum Elise McMahon makes furniture that’s as wild and playful as she is, but beneath its brightly colored surface, her work has another, less-obvious dimension — it makes use of recycled and castoff materials in innovative ways. Her cult tie-dyed chairs, for example, are stuffed with recycled textiles in lieu of petroleum-based foam, helping prove that we’ve truly left behind the time when sustainable design was bland and predictable. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design is about being resourceful, and creating unexpected value out of the materials found where you are. Whether it’s the natural materials found regionally, or the trash built up in a community, designers see these as an opportunity to reimagine possible ways to use them, both learning from traditional applications and imagining future innovations to find that sweet spot between art and industry that design happily exists in. I get excited when I see a designer that has successfully challenged our perception of value — turning nothing into something, but with their own individual flair. Same goes for artists in other mediums of daily life like food, clothing, etc. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I have a number of new collections and installations in the works for exhibitions that are to be announced, since everything seems to change monthly during a pandemic! The pieces I’m the most excited to share are more sculptural than my previous output, and they’ve been percolating for the last few years surrounding my research in the local and global waste streams of textiles, glass, paper, etc. The aim is to show these materials in a wide breadth of possibilities, from art to industrial applications, challenging the perception of low-valued “waste.” Alongside some of the objects being created, I will also be releasing “Access to Tools with People In Places,” a discussion and essay series hosted by the design studio Office of Tangible Space. I also have a correlating sustainable-design education program being developed in collaboration with an organization I often work with, the Kokrobitey Institute in Accra, Ghana. Once Covid lets up, I hope we can finally have some of the in-person design fairs and gatherings that were scheduled for 2020! In the meantime, I have some product collections coming out, like a line of mirrors launching with Areaware this winter. I feel lucky to have a studio with all my tools to … Continue reading LikeMindedObjects

Newfield, New York, johnericbyers.com We’ve been intrigued with Byers’s work ever since we first saw it at ICFF many years ago, when we thought his Brutalist tables and chairs were made from cold, hammered steel only to find out they were hand-carved in blackened maple. Byers trained at Wendell Castle’s school in the 1980s and has been honing his spare yet highly tactile aesthetic ever since. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? When I think of American design, my first thoughts are of the iconoclasts: the architects Frank Loyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller, the furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson, the artists / craftsmen George Nakashima and Wendell Castle, the sculptors Donald Judd and Richard Serra. They each broke through the boundaries and limitations of their time and particular mediums. I see a similar drive, commitment, and freedom of self expression in the current contemporary American design scene, and that is exciting. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Prior to the pandemic, I was considering a solo show (my 30th) of my latest R1x Table Series, but clearly, that was sidetracked. Instead, I’m releasing the work individually to my collection of representative showrooms and galleries. I’ve been having success in the European market and I’m looking forward to the start of a new relationship with a London showroom at the beginning of the year. Next autumn, I’m looking forward to Moderne Gallery representing my work at the Salon Art + Design in NYC and at Design Miami, as they’ve done the past few years. What inspires or informs your work in general? My work is informed by my personal discipline and commitment as a pragmatic idealist, striving for a perfect balance of form + surface + function. Stripping the design down to its purest, simplest form while maximizing its beauty and function. It also comes from how I approach the physicality of the work itself, with awareness of and by embracing the realities and limitations of my body, my craft, my materials, and using those limitations to navigate to the ideal outcome.

Asheville, North Carolina, caseyjohnsonstudio.com More of a sculptor than a furniture designer, Casey Johnson started out making small curvilinear wood objects and more conventional furnishings five years ago, then slowly began exploding his practice into elaborate and extremely cool large-scale cabinets and tables that are sometimes Noguchi, and sometimes Noguchi on acid (in the best possible way). What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? When I think of the American Designer, I picture Evel Knievel or some other stunt person on a motorbike soaring over some kind of impossible stunt (cape and all). Someone who’s constantly taking risks and not afraid of trying new things. It’s that adventurous spirit I see when I look at other American designers I admire. I don’t think you can really nail down American design, and that’s what’s exciting. Since we’re such a diverse group with so many cultural influences overlapping and blending together, there are constantly new ideas emerging. There are no rules, but there IS dedication and commitment to craft. Pushing the limits. This is our strength. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? 2021 will hopefully be better for us all. I don’t think I can speak to the upcoming year without acknowledging how challenging this year has been for so many. We’ve all felt the burden of this year one way or another. Whether it’s been emotional, physical, spiritual, financial, or a combination of all those, we’ve all been tested in ways we didn’t expect. We could all use a year to heal from the present one. My plan this next year is to have more fun and work more intuitively. There will be more sculpture coming out of the studio next year. I will continue to take on commissions but will also be focusing more attention on developing new sculptural forms and exploring new materials.   Outside of just plans for my work, I plan to be more present to the people around me. To spend more time walking in the woods, on the mountain, and sitting by the stream. To slow down, and focus on the things that I’ve learned this year are truly important to me.  What inspires or informs your work in general? True inspiration for me comes when I’m not looking for it. Not to say that my eyes shouldn’t be open to see, I’ve just found that the more I try to find inspiration, … Continue reading Casey Johnson

Portland, Oregon, campagna.cc Many independent furniture designers get their start working in wood simply because it’s an easy-access, no-minimums-required material. For Cody Campanie, though, it’s a birthright — he’s a third-generation woodworker who grew up amidst makers in rural New York, and went on to form a studio around bringing his subtly edgy aesthetic to the traditional craft. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? It’s difficult to discuss what American design is without acknowledging the complexity of American history and how American creativity has been born from eras of conflict and contradiction. For example, Josef Albers, who taught at the Bauhaus and sought refuge in the U.S. after leaving Nazi Germany, was appointed a teaching position at Black Mountain College in North Carolina with the help of architect Philip Johnson, a Nazi sympathizer. Here, Albers mentored the sculptor Ruth Asawa, who was held in an internment camp on the west coast by the U.S. government because she was Japanese-American. This highlights the entanglement of politics and our identity as a country of immigrants with American existence and American design. Once again, we’re in an era of stark conflict and contradiction. But within the pain of the last year, there have also been reasons for excitement. There’s a growing awareness and support of young, talented designers from many backgrounds who are pushing against existing structures and norms. People have a renewed understanding of the importance of craft and quality and are backing small businesses and artisans who make things with their hands. This reading of American design is less about an aesthetic, but more in keeping with an expression of our ever-evolving understanding and criticism of the complexity of our nation. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Over the last year, I’ve been collaborating with my friends at the architecture and design studio Anderson Su on a cabin located in a very special place: Orcas Island in Washington State. We’ve constructed the entire cabin from the ground up (literally, pouring the foundation) and are set to finish early in the new year. It’s been an incredible experience to work at a larger scale while keeping a high level of detail in the craft. From the roof to custom furniture pieces that will be housed within, the entire structure feels like building one big, intricate cabinet. In addition, I’m looking forward to creating some new pieces from materials … Continue reading Campagna