Los Angeles, bellibellibelli.com Ryan Belli’s debut collection this year — whose centerpiece was a series of chairs and sofas that looked like childrens’ drawings writ large — had a delightful weirdness about it. Not unlike the kind associated with his longtime employers, the Haas Brothers, yet also unlike anything we’d seen before. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design right now is incredibly fun, almost lawless. Everything is open to interpretation. Design in general feels very exciting — it seems as though it’s in a sort of Wild West period where people are free to explore all avenues. I have an urge to interpret everything I see and I don’t get the feeling my path needs to narrow. Definitions are loosening on the design of everyday objects, which leaves room to dream up how you want to live and what you want to be surrounded by on a daily basis. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Lots of experimentation with materials, shapes, colors, techniques. Exploring new objects and trying to understand and develop my ideal version of each. I moved into a new space and I’m really thinking a lot about my ideal living situation. Everything deserves consideration, and I’m finding inspiration everywhere. New spaces offer up a lot of questions, and I plan on spending a lot of time coming up with ways to satisfy my curiosities. What inspires or informs your work in general? Travel, going for walks, working with different materials… It’s a bit too cliche, but I really do trust in taking time to smell the flowers’ — long looks at anything that catches my eye. Texture intersections, shadows — following anything that sticks in my mind and trying to figure out what it is that captivates me. Wondering what things could be is my favorite pastime, and I’m seeing more opportunities for exploration at every turn.

New York, sukrachand.com Robert Sukrachand has made plenty of pieces we love — tables sheathed in Microsuede, mirrors built from dichroic glass — but this was the year he took giant shards of colored and antique mirror, laid them out in a haphazard pattern on benches made from composite stone, and called it “Mirazzo” — our favorite yet. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design is exciting precisely because of its lack of rootedness. There is no overwhelming design tradition or ethos in our country and that forms a dynamic atmosphere in which to create in. We can absorb, digest, and rework stylistic influences and material techniques from near and far. The outcome can be profound or it can be a cacophony, but what could be more American than that? When I look around at my peers here in New York, I see a huge variety of pathways to a very diverse set of studio practices. What I mean is that the role of ‘designer’ feels much more blurred here than I’ve observed it to to be in other countries. Many of us aren’t even classically trained in design in any particular way. That disassociation from a particular school of thought leads to great creative freedom for the self starter. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I am so excited for 2020 because I am finally following through on a long term dream: to connect my two homes — the USA and Thailand — through the language of craft and design. We are inviting American designers to come to Thailand for a sort of ‘summer camp’ experience where they can learn and be inspired by the unique materials and processes there. We believe the resulting products will be a natural outgrowth of the material and craft conversations that surface in this exchange. First to partake in this journey is our friend and studio neighbor Pat Kim, whose process-driven work is well-suited for a collaboration with the woodturners, lacquer artisans, and brass casters we have identified in Northern Thailand. I’ll also be developing some new designs with a pottery village that uses a distinctly red local stone called laterite in their vessels. The second pillar of this new project is to introduce the most forward-thinking products from contemporary Thai designers to the American market. We hope to create a connection between … Continue reading Robert Sukrachand

New York, robertmckinley.com If you’ve walked into a hotel or restaurant lately and felt immediately at home — or, alternately, like you wanted to take all of the furnishings home with you — chances are it was designed by Robert McKinley. The New York interior designer has the beachy, vintage-meets-modern aesthetic on lock, and yet is constantly throwing us high-drama curveballs — like a whole room washed in  grassy green, a strangely Baroque upholstery fabric, and a massive, double-height tapestry — that only serve to deepen the intrigue. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? With no intention of sounding trite, American design is freedom. It’s free from many of the cultural and historical expectations that are attached to design in other countries. This always excites me because I don’t feel bound to a certain aesthetic or style, I feel limitless in seeking inspiration from a broad spectrum of references, cultures, styles and movements. This limitlessness allows a real originality to emerge from the American design scene. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? In 2020, we will be working on a number of residential projects. These are ground up projects with a broad design scope, so we are excited to take on a bigger kind of scale — both architecture and interiors. The McKinley Bungalow — shoppable homes we’ve designed with some great design partners — have been very successful for us and we’ll be unveiling another one of these in summer 2020, though with a different, more minimal aesthetic. We are also excited to continue working with long standing clients like Sant Ambroeus Hospitality Group. We’ve been working together for over a decade now. It’s been really amazing to come up together, we’ve developed a real sense of trust and confidence in the aesthetic of their space. In the first half of the year, we will debut one of our biggest collaborations to date in New York — more to come! We’ve designed a few restaurants with a great partner in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, and will be opening one more — a restaurant called March. And a very special wine bar and cheese shop upcoming in Brooklyn. What inspires or informs your work in general? I am always inspired by place. The story that is told by the energy of a city I’m in, the smells and sounds of a restaurant I’m eating … Continue reading Robert McKinley

Los Angeles, objectsforobjects.com If Leonard Cordell Bessemer’s wavy and oblong works for his nascent furniture brand Objects for Objects have cartoon-like colors and forms — well, that’s on purpose. Bessemer counts The Simpsons and The Flintstones among his many influences. But even more than that, he’s inspired by the interplay between fantasy and reality and the potential of furniture to be something more powerful and comforting than a mere object in the room. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Growing up in “real America” — the central valley of California to be specific — design wasn’t really a topic at the dinner table or thought of at all. It was a time when food was frozen, furniture was La-Z-Boys, and wine came in a box. Over the past 30 years, America has had a crash course in culture and is beginning to appreciate the finer things life has to offer, but the one thing that still remains that is truly American is this idea of the pioneer and the “Western” which is ultimately about paving your own way, making your own rules, and deciding your own fate. The current design landscape in America holds true to that and feels very much like the Wild West — not in style, but in sentiment. It seems like all the academic rules of design have been thrown out and now anything is possible. The more hand-crafted, rudimentary, and sculptural the better — just so long as you can almost sit on it or it has a light bulb. Designers are less worried about how a piece functions and more concerned with its overall impact on a space and the people that inhabit it. There is almost a spiritual and/or indigenous aspect to a lot of the work I’m seeing and excited about at the moment. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? 2019 has been a great year for me, but I’m hoping to expand production in 2020 and make things more widely available. I’ll be releasing a new collection in the spring. I’m working on a project with Areaware right now, and I’ll be showing some lighting at Collectible in Brussels with Chloé Valette of Husk Design What inspires or informs your work in general? I started out working for the British artist David Thorpe in Berlin. His work is very much in the element of Arts and Crafts movement meets Kubrick Monolith. We made everything … Continue reading Objects for Objects

New York, musing-selles.com The charm of the work of Müsing-Sellés, the shared studio of Spanish architect Álvaro Gómez-Sellés and Canadian architect Marisa Müsing, is in its strange yet beautiful forms. Their first collection combined super-fat legs and a hidden cabinet with a mesmerizing metallic ombre finish, their second featured a bizarre yet exciting double-sided chair, and their latest turned slug-like glass vessels, meant to evoke plump body parts, into a covetable object. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? The opportunities that arise for emerging designers are really unique to American design — it’s a dynamic and exciting field to be working in, and the approaches really push for more experimentation over practicality. The boundary between art and design is very blurred in this case too; the new work we see and the people we speak to are constantly pushing the limits of what design can be and fulfill. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? This year we want to slow down and focus on more experimental work. Both having backgrounds in architecture, our projects are usually digitally designed and rendered to begin with, but we plan to play more with understanding tactile materials and building design concepts from a physical perspective, in order to understand how materials can change and behave in different scales. Around this goal, we plan to experiment with a couple of upcoming projects, ranging from small-scale sets of objects to bigger-scale sets of rooms and spaces, exploring the boundaries between design and architecture. What inspires or informs your work in general? We take inspiration mainly from an architectural process to start, thinking of the spatiality of the thing we’re interested in making. We’ve always designed through sets, so the pieces behave more like figures in a room rather than standalone objects. The objects act like little characters; we give them names and specific traits. Some are robust ‘towers,’ others have small legs that hold up much larger volumes. It adds a fun playfulness to the design. Our inspirations are driven by the way we set each scene — we usually come up with a narrative for the room or environment that the pieces work within. The first set we envisioned in a small cocktail party environment, for example. Recently we’ve been interested in more human elements, like the folds and irregularities we find beautiful in the body. Our most recent project, curated by … Continue reading Müsing-Sellés

New York, @matthewdayjackson Matthew Day Jackson was already a successful multi-media artist — represented by Hauser & Wirth — when he officially crossed over into design this year, with the release of his first commercial furniture collection in Milan: loopy tables and chairs for Made By Choice, inspired by moon landings and Formica. He also stole the show in The Future Perfect’s booth at Design Miami in December with his hand-formed “Wonky” series. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I don’t really know anything about contemporary American design, but I’m learning. I like what I see from Ladies and Gentleman, Calico, Chen and Kai, Chris Wolston, and my partner Laura Seymour who makes amazing ceramics. I don’t have my finger on the pulse of American design, but I feel that because we don’t celebrate the visual artist, nor have a particular design language, the industry feels to me to be a very open playing field. Contemporary American art seems to recognize the boundaries of conventions mapped by art history, but carries a pole vault, a battering ram, lube, scuba gear, a warm set of clothes, etc to be prepared in the event of an encounter. I think contemporary American Design might be the same — or at least it feels similar. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I’m working on some super top-secret projects that are so sensitive I would be risking my family’s well being if I were to state them here. I can give a hint though: One is a wall covering and the other makes shimmery light. I’m having a show in Zurich with my gallery Hauser & Wirth in the fall of 2020, and I’m designing a playground for a wonderful project which is also top secret. I’m also trying really hard to make electric go-karts with my kids. In my collaboration with Made By Choice, we’ll be furthering the Kolho collection with a very cool change in the plywood. Also top secret: I’m trying to release the second edition of Maa, a role-playing game I developed with Juhanna Petersen, Tom Morton, and Timo Valjakka. All of these projects may fail miserably — it will not be for lack of trying! What inspires or informs your work in general? I’m currently in love with Rodin’s Gates of Hell, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Claudia Martinez Garay at Grimm Gallery, Nicole Eisenman’s sculpture that was in … Continue reading Matthew Day Jackson

Baltimore, malcolmmajer.com There’s something at once inviting and foreboding about Malcolm Majer’s work. The Baltimore-based designer makes geometric seats in riotous, color-shifting hues from intersecting planes of steel, aluminum, and wood — something like street furniture for the Wonkaverse.  What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? In considering what’s unique in American design, unfortunately, on a large scale and within a global context we are the developers and exporters of what many love to hate about the built environment. I’d like to believe, however, that the ability to generate environments that are at once tasteless and deeply appealing to humans means American design is uniquely liberated. Personally, this perspective gives me permission to explore forms and concepts without hangups, ditching external value systems. I see this ethos reflected in the work of contemporary American designers I admire and I love it. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? This year I’m showing again at the AD Design Show in New York in March, featuring a new body of work and a new approach to showing. Goals for the year are: lighting, a desk, an interior. I’ve been talking to a curator about creating and presenting work that pushes into areas of concept while preserving the forms and level of craft that drives me to make work at all. More shows will likely materialize as the year wears on, but more importantly making a bunch of new work and staying excited are the must-obtain goals for 2020. What inspires or informs your work in general? I am inspired by all Modernism that uses rigid geometries. I’m also inspired by Postmodernism, both as a formal language and a conceptual framework. I see my work as postmodern; I like arranging modernist forms irrationally. I run an architectural fabrication business and for years I struggled with what my vision would be and how it would relate to the work people want, trends, “high design,” mass production, and money. I have to admit making things per the designs of architects and various clients according to their wishes and deadlines mostly sucks. There’s gratification at the end, when it’s done (and paid for), but it’s tainted. My furniture work is personal and though occasionally tedious it’s largely driven by my interests and guided through a process I find joyful. I dig in to the craft when I want and I stop … Continue reading Malcolm Majer

Los Angeles, lland-studio.com We never thought we’d use the words “rustic chic,” but we can’t think of a better way to describe the work of Los Angeles designer Rachel Shillander, who combines natural materials in their roughest, rawest states with sophisticated, elevated forms. Her Masonry series in particular really sold us — for awhile we were calling it “terrazzo 2.0.” What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? To me you can’t talk about American design without addressing American fabrication, and for me American fabrication is about options. For what you can’t figure out how to make yourself, there’s a fabricator for it. If you need to lay some stone, there are masons. If you need to bend some wire, there are wire-benders. You can also chose from nearly any scale and price point — dude-in-a-garage machinists to large-scale commercial outfits. You only have to know how to communicate with them: a hand-gesture, sketch, or full set of shop drawings. It’s also about pushing the limits of the options that are available. There are loads of new digital fabrication methods, too, and they’ve been around long enough now that they’re pretty affordable. Owning a CNC machine or having access to a robotic arm isn’t out of the question anymore. America is vast and there really are so many resources available to us. We also aren’t limited to fabricators in the US; Mexico has been a great resource for me. There are so many skilled stone carvers there, and it’s so close. I’ve found that in the US, a trade like stone carving is treated like a fine art, and in Mexico it is treated more like a trade craft. This has nothing to do with the labor market’s skills, but with price, availability, and attitude. The stone I use for my carved work is also native to Mexico, so it wouldn’t make sense to have it fabricated here. The tradition of carving that stone is there, so why would I ignore the place-specific skill associated with the material? It really is all about the availability of material and labor resources, where to find them, and how to use them. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? The studio is moving at the beginning of this year and will be getting a small crane hoist. So far, I’ve figured out ways to work around making heavy objects, like making things … Continue reading Lland

Los Angeles, launlosangeles.com If LAUN was simply the only contemporary design studio we know of to focus on outdoor furniture, it would already stand out from the crowd. But in the hands of founders Rachel Bullock and Molly Purnell, LAUN becomes something else entirely, with a focus on local manufacturing, a sensitivity to materials and finishes, influences that range from Hollywood Regency to Victoriana, and a sense of fun firmly intact. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American designers are allowed to be incredibly peripatetic in their lives in a way that I don’t think you see in other places. This country is so big; there is a lot of inherent diversity because of the sheer size. We might spend a year in New Year, a year in Portland, and several years in LA, and we absorb so much from all of those disparate places. American designers are always pulling ideas from “where they’re from” whether that means where you live now, where you grew up, where your parents came from, where you can trace your last name to, or some combination of these. We like that you can dive into those historical references or contextual, place-based references for inspiration. American design also has a strong connection with manufacturing. We aren’t afraid to express craft and fabrication in our work. We make a lot of things ourselves and we’re able to approach manufacturers who are more specialized (they may typically make aircraft parts or first aid kits) but are willing to take on the experimental work of young, independent designers to help us realize our vision. There aren’t a lot of rules you have to follow in American design and that’s really exciting. We have access to almost any material you can possibly think of and if you can come up with an innovative way to use it then you can just let your imagination run wild. For example, we really like experimenting with finishes on metal and we have access to this company that does yellow zinc plating; that’s a very industrial finish, something you usually see on nuts and bolts. It’s an economical but also an unpredictable finish. We’ve found that when you plate a large surface like a table you can get this beautiful iridescent pattern, which you would never be able to see on a nut or bolt, even if you were looking for it, which of course you … Continue reading Laun

Los Angeles, kellywearstler.com Wearstler is known in some circles as the doyenne of American interior design, and truth be told, she could have been named to this list a hundred times over. But a brand new book, a wildly fun new furniture collection, and a series of splashy vintage-meets-modern interiors for the Proper Hotels brand — complete with commissions from young designers like Chris Wolston and Morgan Peck — made this her best year yet.  What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? For me, American design is about having a free spirit and open mind. Curiosity is boundless and with it comes an inspiring sense of anything goes. Trailblazing art exhibits populate our cities, pushing the boundaries of materiality in design and architecture. Technology’s position at the forefront with the continual collaboration in design is also super exciting. I am so keen on the exploration of how we can continually make our lives easier and more efficient. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I have two new hotel projects — Austin Proper just launched and DTLA Proper will debut in the spring — in addition to many new residential projects, upcoming furniture and lighting collections, and an extensive new fabric and wallcovering collection launching in February. The limited edition of my book Evocative Style will also be debuting in February and I’m working on a few collaborative projects currently under wraps that I am super excited about. What inspires or informs your work in general? Being fearless, taking risks, and following my continual curiosity drives the evolution and refinement of my design aesthetic, philosophy and development. I am inspired by so many incredible artists, art forms, eras in history, textures, patterns, materials… it is truly endless. Working with artists and artisans from all over the world is really inspiring. I learn so much from them, it broadens my horizons and ultimately makes me a better designer. I’m so grateful that I get to spend every single day doing something I absolutely love. Design is the meeting place of all of my passions.

Los Angeles, januari.co Futuristic sci-fi dreamscapes inspire the work of Texas-born, Los Angeles–based designer Blake Wright, and it shows: The first works for his nascent brand Januari are all lacquered blacks and gleaming metals, as much a function of Wright’s expertise (welding, woodworking) as they are his inspirations. What is American design to you and what excites you about it? For me, the American design scene has proven that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the United States. It excites me to see that so many American designers have built names for themselves and created successful businesses. As a new designer in his mid-twenties with few industry relationships and almost no formal training, it inspires me to know that some of those successful businesses were started by people like me. A key aspect of the American design community is its relative youth. Since American design has a shorter history than many countries, the design here takes inspiration from all over the world and all across time. The result is unparalleled creativity and a dynamic blend of styles. There’s also a great appreciation for craft in the US. From woodworking to welding to stonework and beyond, there are many talented artists pushing the boundaries of their chosen mediums. Anyone following these artists can’t help but be inspired to do the same. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Over the last year or so, my work has taken a stylistic change that I’m very excited to explore. I’ve been attempting to blend Surrealist art and simplistic functionality. I intend to push my work closer to the logical conclusion of this concept in hopes of establishing my own unique style. Perhaps equally important, I plan on growing my brand so that this passion of mine can become a sustainable, profitable business. I don’t currently have any ongoing retail partners in the high-end LA market, which is something I intend to change. I’d also like to introduce a few more affordable objects to sell on my website so that my work can be more accessible. What inspires or informs your work in general? Though my work is intended for the contemporary home, most of my inspiration comes from relics of the past and dreams of the future. I’m inspired by sacred architecture found in ancient sites like the Giza Plateau, the temples of Petra, the Kailasa Temple, and Ancient … Continue reading Januari

New York, ianfeltonstudio.com Ian Felton is one of that rare breed who seem to emerge from design school fully formed and ready to take on the world, so assured and sophisticated was his debut, which launched at Michael Bargo’s gallery this fall (an imprimatur of cool if we’ve ever seen one). In reality, Felton spent more than a year just thinking about and researching his Kosa collection before starting work on it, imbuing each beautiful piece with a clear sense of narrative and history.  What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I think what’s so exciting about American design is that we’re still such a young/diverse culture comparatively speaking. I hate to be cliché, but there’s such a melting pot of cultures and backgrounds, in New York especially. Albeit, we’re a capitalist economy so creation is driven by need, trend, and demand, but there’s such a vast and supportive market for artists and creatives so the burdens for abiding by the rules or cultural/historic normalcies sort of fall away — and people see the truth behind that. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I’ll be presenting all new works at an offsite show during Milan Design week with a small new gallery. Hopefully, I’ll be debuting these works with a new materiality I’ve been developing for the past year or so. Other than that, I have a few small interior design projects actually — one residential apartment in Madrid with my partner in crime Valerie Name (an interior designer) and maybe a few other interiors, and obviously developing more new work! What inspires or informs your work in general? This first collection took a lot of reference from Pre-Columbian artifacts, but I think more broadly I’m fascinated with anthropology. I’m quite new ‘to the scene’ I guess you could say but I think I’ll continue to find inspiration in antiquity. As a species, we’ve been so fixated on mass consumption and rapid progression beyond consequence, I think there’s definitely something to be said about looking into the annals of human creation back when we were more connected to environment and storytelling.