10 Questions With… Dustin Yellin

Inside the studio—a warehouse he renovated down the street from his multidisciplinary art center Pioneer Works—Yellin relies on natural light as well as Ketra lighting by Lutron, merging the day’s fluctuating hues with shades he can tune and control. “Like a fly caught in amber, my works act as a kind of time capsule,” he says. “Instead of hosting fossils, I embed human artifacts, typically images sourced from print media, within in such a way that we, as a species, become the specimen.”   

Read Interior Design’s interview with Yellin about finding the right light and the performative aspect of his sculptures.

Interior Design: The invention of the moving image owes much to lighting. What role does light play in your idea of “frozen cinema,” in other words suspending an image to stillness? 

Dustin Yellin: Goethe once said that “architecture is frozen music.” My use of the term “frozen cinema” is an update to his idea that through pattern, plan, and frame, an artist can breathe narrative into fixed forms. Like architecture, and unlike cinema, sculpture requests the observer to experience art through a body in motion in space and time, which is never constant. In a sense, I employ two forms of scenography; one that is pictorial, while the other relies on an active viewer who becomes their own director scripting encounters with the work in real space and in real time. I find that the difference between stillness and animation is really just a matter of time.   

ID: Could you talk about your relationship with glass as a form of craft and a conceptual medium? 

DY: Glass is a paradoxical medium; it is both strong and fragile while it also attempts to show itself and hide at the same time. Duchamp once said something to the effect that the best art exhibits an ambiguity of experience that is not one thing or the other, but is both one thing, and something else at the same time. To answer in the negative, the only thing I am against conceptually in art is the dichotomy between either/or states of being.  

ID: Light, whether natural or artificial, is critical in an artist’s life in studio, one that even determines the artist’s use of the space. What is your relationship with light from conception of a work to its final form? 

DY: All vision is predicated on light, and yet we often take light for granted. Glass by its very nature does something extortionary to all forms of light: it bends it. And while painting reflects light, glass acts as both a prism and a filter that makes legible how photons move around the work and around us. As an analog, my glass works are more like sensors that allow each viewer, and myself, to build sensitivity to the nature of light itself.    

ID: Why is midday sunlight your favorite? 

DY: Midday’s lack of shadows chips away at the object-hood of glass, transforming it into something more akin to an instrument, whether that be a window, a mirror, or a prism.   

ID: Light lives through a constant shift through movement, similar to your sculptures that invite viewers to rotate around them. How do you orchestrate this sense of mobility for your audience? 

DY: My works have different edge conditions that each provide different ways and moments of seeing the work. As sculpture exists in four dimensions, the act of the observer moving around and through these different conditions allows a suit of shifting views that merge, develop, and emerge yet again out of these situations and their borders. This movement allows the work to always be in a state of “becoming.”  

ID: Exhibiting Psychogeographies in spaces associated with dance creates an interesting contrast between movement and stillness. Could you talk about your projects for Lincoln Center in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. through this aspect? 

DY: There is an adage that the rests between notes give music its soul. Movement and stillness are already wed, just as darkness is to light. Each defines and clarifies the other; without one there cannot be the other. Jung mentioned that the human condition is one of duality, and that art is the expression par excellence of this reality.  

ID: Psychogeographies consists of paintings and sculptures. How do you see these play with dimensionality? 

DY: Since the Renaissance, Western art developed a form of painterly perspective based on foreshortening and geometry. The Modernists countered this illusion by flatlining the picture plane to assert the flatness of the canvas. Instead of seeing these two modes as antithetical, I mix both together so that the shift between each technique produces a “3rd depth”.  As my works are three dimensional objects comprised ostensibly of sets of layered picture plains, I also move along the z-axis through these plains to provide a further play of depth through the relation between classical perspective and scale in real space.  

ID: Scale is another critical element, almost similar to miniature art in which minuscule elements build a narrative altogether. Can you share a bit about your process of using small bits to form larger narratives? 

DY: Each work is a microcosm in which the individual parts never lose their own unique identity. They also work together as a community of images to produce a larger systemic image at the same time.  

ID: You create work-on-paper studies of your sculptures but also use paper bits inside the works. Could you talk about your relationship with paper?  

DY: Since the beginning of time, people have made marks to record their existence. These marks endure and circulate long after as a collection of shared experience. There are many words for this greater body of knowledge, be it consciousness or culture. In a sense, I feel that I tap into this long conversation by sourcing other people’s marks, and then reconfiguring these items with mark-making of my own. By preserving these histories in glass, I can sustain that long conversation.  

ID: Pioneer Works is a space that proves the multimedia direction art-making has evolved into in recent years. Many artists and designers refuse categorization of their practices. How do you see the center’s impact on your work and vice versa? 

DY: Pioneer Works is a “museum of process” in which we support the continual development of all disciplines and practices through experimentation and production. I feel that as we support others, we advance ourselves. Pioneer Works is my life practice; they are one and the same.  

10 Questions With… Chris Wolston

The Nalgonas, which reflect Wolston’s design lexicon, is a series of hefty rattan seats with limbs sprouting from their various corners. Playful and bodily, they poke at the notions of gender, performance, camp, and familiarity, all while breathing an alternative life to a material tightly connected to Colombia through agriculture and history. 

While Wolston presents his work with The Future Perfect gallery through solo shows and fairs like Design Miami/ and Salone, he works from a Medellín studio in a century-old neighborhood with an eclectic architecture that mixes those heydays with modern buildings. Both inside his blue-painted workplace and out in a backyard, he collaborates with local artisans to create wicker furniture, as well as ceramics in a warehouse next door. “Mother Nature Pachamama is very present here,” he says about his life between the studio and a house up in the mountains. “There is a dynamic landscape between the city and the mountainside—we are in the city of eternal spring here.”

Interior Design: Wicker is a transatlantic material, with a history that spans Africa, Asia, Americas, and Europe. How does such a culturally-layered material inform your practice? 

Chris Wolston: To think materials can connect us with various cultures and civilizations is fascinating, and this is true for archeological ceramics or woven basketry. Although woven baskets haven’t survived archeologically in the same way ceramics have, they always had a place and time in history. Materials and techniques shift a bit, but rattan and the wicker technique have existed in various parts of the world. Europe, for example, has a long history of wicker weaving with willow and different species of reed. Speaking this location and Colombia, wicker material comes from yare which is a natural vine harvested by indigenous communities .

I should note that the style of weaving that we use at the studio for furniture-making is just one of many. A lot of the furniture made with this material is basically sofas that go outdoors next to the pool, so aesthetically not everything is so perfected. Working with the master craftspeople is an interesting process because of the opportunity to push the technique to more developed aesthetic directions and create an alternative to what is largely available.  

ID: How is your relationship with this material in terms of a learning process? Given its history and potential in use, is this an unending education?

CW: My practice has actually developed out of this very reason, through a personal exploration of the material with new techniques. As a foreigner living here, for instance, this has also been an exploration of the place. There are so many different ways to work with materials, and part of my practice is really based around exploration, even maybe obsessively. This could be about how to use the aluminum in a in a new way or push wicker to new directions.

ID: How does your collaboration with local artisans and craftspeople guide this journey?

CW: Medellín is interesting because we have the studio where we create the majority of the work, and a lot of that work involves artisans from small scale studios nearby. For example, the aluminum foundry I work with is just down the street or the polisher is around the corner. This proximity to material mastery in a localized area is fascinating, especially if we are talking about learning further on materials and develop ideas around them. I’d call here a material paradise. In a city like New York, resources are probably within the tri-state area but actually gaining access to people and materials is pretty impossible. Here, we are in a seamless flow.

ID: Let’s talk about the humanoid element of your chairs and light fixtures. There is a boldness in your direct reference to the body. How did you develop this signature silhouette?

CW: I was working at the aluminum foundry for the tables, and I became interested in how fleshy the surface of thin cast aluminum looked. I created a series of tables that had different humanoid forms as a way to bring out that element of materiality. As someone whose studio practice is developed out of research, I am obsessed about how materials are applied in these industrial scenarios and figuring out new ways of applying those techniques. I’ve always been interested in furniture as sort of a media. Because it’s relational and so unpretentious, everybody has a certain level of intimacy with their furniture, or they’re able to interact with them in a way that is natural. For me, creating furniture is similar to making relational sculptures. One of the elements think often is this human relationship with materials. It is funny that the chairs have emerged as these very human forms that embrace the sitters. My intention in applying this materiality to the forms was also to create something tactile that calls for a physical connection.

ID: There is an element of surreality in your rendition of limbs in various forms, hugging or zigzagging. Could you talk about your interest in Surrealism and Dalí?

CW: Before I put together my last collection, I had visited the Dalí Museum and the Miro Foundation, in Barcelona. I think that humor and abstraction can be an entry point for people to have a better connection with the materiality, so a lot of my work has an element of humor. That allows people to connect with the work and their material and have a more personal experience.

ID: How about the furniture’s genderless-ness? The objects are bodies without distinct markers of any sex or gender.

CW: Everybody is into what they’re into. I see Nalgona chairs as [masculine] but other people will refer to them in other genders that aren’t at the forefront of my mind, and I think that’s great. The idea is that the furniture lets people have an entry point to have their own experience. This shows the variation in perspective. Living between New York and Medellín, the variation in perspectives is very clear, and I find it important to acknowledge that we all do have different perspectives on the body and its expressions. 

ID: Could you talk about the invitation for performance? A chair with limbs prompts the sitter to engage with furniture in ways that are beyond the typical ritual of using a seat—the user’s body must react to the body referenced in the chair.

CW: The work is an exploration into cultural context. But instead of presenting it in a really formal way, I find humorous presentations which I think is actually more unpretentious and accessible to all.

ID: You also achieve this access with the photography and activate furniture with models.

CW: I work with photographer David Sierra who is a fashion photographer. A lot of the time, the pieces are photographed in a fashion-oriented way or we have even done short films. Furniture in some ways has similarities to fashion: they are materials that humans interact with. Therefore, I am interested in showing how models interact with the forms with a nod to high fashion. This way, there is a story beyond just the object itself—a narrative. David is such an incredible photographer who gives a dimensionality to the furniture. Here in the studio, there are so many stories, different people, and various processes that it’s nice to create a story and context for that work. The photography is not necessarily telling the story of the making, but create a narrative that the pieces can live in.

ID: Craft has been a primary tool for queer artists and designers for challenging the status quo on valuation of labor, questioning the hierarchies of making, and emphasizing the process over the finished material. How do you see this social side of being engaged with craft today?

CW: Craft is egalitarian—especially as we previously talked about the unpretentious and accessible nature of the work. Looking at ancient traditions in Southeast Asia, Europe, or the Middle East, these materials and techniques have been used throughout humanity. Clay, weaving traditions, stone, or wood carving—for all, craft is the universal mastery of the technique without added interpretation of a concept, ego or other elements. On a pure level, craft is human interaction with materials. Looking at gender and identity, as well as the exploration of new frontiers within these genres, craft is a really interesting entry point because it doesn’t necessarily have a definitive set of rules. Rather, it is more about exploration and discovery.

ID: Has your recent tapestry work at New York’s Emma Scully Gallery come out of a similar experimentation with the material? Have you been in search of new directions and textures?

CW: The two carpets in Anti Chairs are parts of a larger series, which are based on abstract oil pastel drawings I created with inspiration from the native bird species in my garden—think of tropical birds in bright colors. This was a personal exploration of abstractionist aesthetic, and later, I worked with a team in Chimichagua which is a town famous for its grass carpets. I had been interested in this weaving technique for some time, so I gave different weaving studios in this town the same drawing, with specifications on the dimension and the dyes but left interpretations of the drawing to the each weaver. When the carpets came back, the results were fascinatingly different although there was still a clear similarity within them. This was an exploration of subjectivity and objectivity in weaving and the role of the personal perspective.

10 Questions With… Katharina Kaminski and Rodrigo García

The sculptor and model Katharina Kaminski created her light sculptures, which also function as candle holders, during a life-changing discovery. The Uruguay- and Paris-based ceramicist received her genetic test results that confirm she was born intersex while working on a series of bulbous bodily forms. In the meantime, Kaminski continued to hand-pour clay for her sculptures at a foundry in France’s perfume capital Grasse. “I try to follow the clay with an authentic clear energetic intention that transforms itself as the work begins to come alive—I feel the clay, I feel myself, and creation happens,” she tells Interior Design.

The series, aptly titled Luminous Beings, came out of a collaboration with Kaminski’s life partner and Amen Candles founder Rodrigo García to bring the element of light into her work. “The series has empowered me to tap into my truth, to connect with a vision of self that is not adopted from others, but one that is mine and more compassionate with myself,” she adds. Referencing the body in gentle poetic ways, the light sculptures “opened a new chapter in my life,” Kaminski says. In the last year, they’ve been on view at Design Miami/ fair, Bergdorf Goodman, and Dover Street Market in Paris. 

“They encourage forward thinking, authenticity, innocence, pride, a sensuality much rooted in the earth and a high directed spirit,” Kaminski adds. “They brought to surface a version of myself that was deep inside and hopefully they can inspire others on their journey.” While the artist is currently working on large versions of the series as well as experimenting with bronze, marble, and stone, Amen Candles is expanding the light sculptures and their Luz candles in July with new scents, such as eucalyptus, vetiver and ginger, in addition to existing rose and sandalwood. In the fall, new sculptural forms will be added to the series, as well.  

Interior Design talked to Kaminski and García about activating sculptures with scents and light, as well as creating with a mission to stand up for an under-represented community in the design world. 

Interior Design: Could you talk about the journey of your personal and professional unities? How do both relationships feed each other?

Katharina Kaminski: When we first met we would always connect through dreams, goals and visions, and as a couple those got intersected to create a life together. Creating together is a big part of our relationship. We understand each other beyond words and our qualities complement each other very well. We have that creative chemistry—and to me, that’s a huge turn on!

Rodrigo García: The answer to the question in one word would be: organic. For example, the very initial spark idea of light sculptures started by us having outdoor dinners in nature and seeing that classic candles would turn off by the wind, and it was just an idea. Then Katharina started creating a concept which became a challenge of making the empty space the soul of the sculpture instead of the classical approach of the external form. Like holes in Lucio Fontana’s paintings or silence in music compositions, Katharina dominated the empty space. The empty space becomes alive with inner light, becomes a luminous being.

ID: A candle and design object tap into different sensual experiences, smelling and seeing respectively. What type of connections do you see between scents and a design aesthetic?

RG: It is not about a scent, a visual aesthetic or a sound, it is about the feeling that those stimulus generate on us. Whether by smelling a scented candle or by contemplating the light of a light sculpture, the idea is bring us to now, to be present. That is my philosophy of design, it is about designing experiences, instead of just products of design.

It is about bringing harmony, calm, and being present in the moment. I feel candles’ fire light brings us peace. And specially with scent, when we are smelling an aroma, we are not thinking of something else. Luminous Beings connects this in a synesthetic new experience of sculpture, which is the visual art that operates in three dimensions, into a new dimension of light sculptures with scents—they become a fourth dimension experienced when the observer lights the scented candle. Changing at every instant with the observer’s perspective, they become Luminous Beings. It is a meditative experience of time, light, and space, and of course, fragrance.

ID: Intersex community has been underrepresented in the art and design world. Has this been changing? Could you talk about your experience?

KK: Intersex community has been underrepresented in not just the art and design world—it has been underrepresented, stigmatized and forbidden subject by parents, doctors and the whole system. I am optimistic that we are in a much more open-minded place as society and it is generally more welcome to talk about it. In my experience, I still feel not everyone is comfortable with this topic but I feel happy that I can help a little by opening the conversation on intersexuality and that many people are happy to learn about it. Many are surprised to first find about a condition present in same percentage of humans as redheads that they never heard about before. 

Silence creates taboo, taboo creates trauma and nobody deserves none of that! Expressing, sharing, coming together can be very healing. I dream of a future where kids that are born intersex are not stigmatized and parents are properly educated, guided, and supported.

ID: How does modeling and the fashion world inspire your design practice? Do you find yourself connecting the two worlds?

KK: I feel that connection of worlds in this context would be me, Katharina Kaminski, my spiritual path and the balance of energies that both professions give me. Modeling has been the greatest university of life for me. I find it very enriching and exciting to have a profession that requires me to be open to unexpected adventures and meet new creative people all the time. I find inspiration and growth in all the people, places, and new situations along the journey. In modeling I have learned to embody an energy, to use my physicality to express something, which connects with being a sculptor who models clay. The big difference with modeling and making art is that modeling jobs choose me, while I get to choose myself when I create. I find that very powerful because I get to explore the depths of being myself as it comes and express myself more profoundly. It’s a journey that feels more natural to my most authentic self. At this point of my life, I feel very grateful to be able to explore both facets of mine and evolve in them and through each other. 

ID: Your forms defy any gender connotation while paying homage to bodily curves. How do you balance this duality of capturing an alternative corporeality?

KK: The balance of the duality is my inner process and an alternative corporeality was an unconscious seek for new perspectives and to celebrate the infinite human experience. The only way to capture this is to be in that meditative creative space that allows my truth to be expressed. That is the beauty of art to me.

ID: Luminous Beings is about the immaterial through the material experiences of scents and sculpture. Could you talk about encapsulating ephemerality through sculpture?

KK: I see my creative process as a physical manifestation of whats going on inside me, that takes form in space, translating what I can not express in no other way than with art.

ID: The light sculptures are also about discovery. They invite the viewer to look inside their hollow parts and notice different curves. What do you think about crafting this ritual for viewer through your work?

KK: If you look around you will never find angles in nature: in nature everything is curved. Angles are men-made and so is the binary norm. Not everyone is born in this norm, nature is infinite. I hope curves inspire for a world with more openness, understanding, harmony and love.

A luminous being for me means someone that enlightens you with their presence. The collection of lit clay sculptures embodies a universe free of limits, where life is celebrated for its infinite unique forms of expression.

ID: What about the element of light? The sculptures gain a new depth with light stemming from their bellies. How critical was the presence of light in your design?

KK: I love the challenge of shaping the way the light comes out of my sculptures, specially a candle light which is the element of fire—it has life and it moves, giving the light a form. I personally love the ritual of turning the candle light on in the sculpture. I invite the observer to become a participant of the creative process when lighting the fire and changing the form of the light with each perspective.

ID: Could you talk about your studio life in Uruguay?

KK: In Uruguay is where I have my studio and where I am creating everyday, being in nature helps me to be peaceful to create with intention. When I am in Paris, it’s more a balance of modeling work, creating and planning where the work is going to be shared—the more “yang” part of being an artist. But the truth is, I travel with my tools everywhere and I create from anywhere. I have lots of experience in the nomad life.

RG: Both of us spending a long time in nature in Uruguay allow us to connect with nature and express that in our philosophy of design. My philosophy of design is to think always more than sustainable design, to think on how nature would do it on every aspect of it from the scents—[to make] the eucalyptus scent just like eucalyptus is in nature—or when it comes to packing, we wouldn’t use a plastic styrofoam packaging, so lets look for a biodegradable mushrooms mycelium packaging. Being in Uruguay also helps to remain authentic, and instead of being influenced by trends or what others are doing, it allows to create unique and authentic design with purpose.

ID: How about Paris? After the isolation of Uruguay, does the city’s chaos and energy inspire you?

RG: Paris is great for launching and sharing new collections to our community of creative friends, feel the feedback, and share our purpose. Since the beginning of Amen Candles in 2020, I love to launch new concepts at Dover Street Parfums Market because there is a great community of designers and creatives that are very open minded to share the purpose behind our concepts. For example, when we were about to launch our mushrooms packaging some buyers would say we need to add a gold or a ribbon on it, while at DSPM we had carte blanche to creativity. Same goes for sharing our Luminous Beings collaboration with Katharina and to be speaking about intersex awareness and celebrating the infinite human experience, Paris is now the right moment and right place to share our purpose, to start a conversation, which is our intention, is not about product, but is about objects of design that begin conversations.

10 Questions With… Superhouse Founder Stephen Markos

After starting in downtown Manhattan, Superhouse is expanding globally. This month, the gallery’s first international exhibition will open during Milan Design Week in collaboration with womenswear brand, The Attico. Back in the States, Superhouse fall programming includes debuts of historical works by artists and designers popular in the Downtown NYC art furniture scene in the 1980s and ‘90s, such as Elizabeth Browning Jackson, James Evanson, Dan Friedman, and James Hong. The November slot belongs to the first solo exhibition of emerging ceramic artist Ellen Pong. And the gallery’s first design fair presentation will be held during Design Miami/ in December in its Curio section

Interior Design caught up with Markos before he makes his way to Milan Design Week.

Interior Design: Could you talk about the evolution of Superhouse from an IG account to a physical gallery?

Stephen Markos: Initially, the Instagram account helped me build an audience, share my knowledge, and meet artists, collectors and business partners. Additionally, Superhouse presented both historical and contemporary design through innovative digital experiences, employing the 3-D skills of multidisciplinary artist Duyi Han and building a collaboration with Friedman Benda, OrtaMiklos and Guillaume Roux. I inaugurated the physical gallery with a solo show by Sean Gerstley and I have been lucky enough to fill the space with incredible art furniture and design by other talented artists and designers ever since.

ID: How effective has the pandemic been in this transition, both in positive and negative ways?

SM: While the pandemic delayed those plans a bit, it also created unconventional opportunities to exhibit work. For instance, in December 2020 Superhouse held a weekend-long group exhibition called “Super Group” that was such a hit that it has now become a semi-annual showcase of leading contemporary design. 

ID: With the rising popularity of online galleries and viewing rooms, why did you feel a need to open a physical space?

SM: There is no comparison to a physical space. Early in my career, I worked to launch the first fine art online auction platform with Artnet. Back then, it was exceedingly difficult to coax buyers into purchasing art online. But through Artnet’s diligent efforts, as well as those by other companies, buyer perceptions have changed. While furniture can certainly be purchased online, getting to experience the work in real life is so important to many buyers. Sitting in a chair, turning on a light, feeling the surface of a vase, or understanding the scale… The sensory information gathered from this in-person experience cannot be replicated online (at least, so far). 

ID: You used the virtual space and video games in your projects before. How do you bring a similar sense of experimentation to your storefront space? 

SM: Firstly, the “vitrine” is a non-traditional concept. While the art world has been using the concept for years (Anton Kern has its WINDOW, Paula Cooper has its vitrine on West 21st Street, etc.) I haven’t seen it used so much in the design world. Secondly, the context in which I show the work is critical. The pieces are typically exhibited in immersive environments where the viewer can be intimately surrounded by the design on the display. With Ryan Decker’s solo show “Feudal Relief,” the artist took the concept further, covering the walls and floor in digital prints replicating a stone-walled dungeon and transport the viewer into a wholly new world. The space is an approachable size that can be a laboratory for experimentation and (somewhat) easily transformed with each exhibition.

ID: Your interests range from the Radical era of the Italian design to artists flirting with the cyber space, how do you see curation as part of your strategy as a design dealer?

SM: I feel that my varied interests in design are important to my clients, bringing them exciting new work that they’ve never seen before and also re-contextualizing familiar, historical work in novel ways. Someone told me once that I am “blurring the timeline” as design is concerned. While I am flattered at such a statement (though I’m not sure how accurate it is), I do appreciate the idea of mixing aesthetics, materials, and periods to achieve my point of view.

ID: While queer artists are gaining a growing visibility, the design world seems slower in accepting similar representation. What have been some of the challenges of representing queer designers?

SM: Queer artists and designers are everywhere. What is interesting, however, is how some do not necessarily feel their identity is important in defining their work. My role is not to force artists into sharing their private life for commercial reasons, but to honor how they want to be represented. With that said, as more artists feel comfortable expressing this part of their identity, the greater the visibility of queerness in design we will all have. 

ID: “Ingrained” for example was dedicated to woodwork—how do you see a parallel between queer designers and certain materials? Fiber for example is a common material and wood is an interesting one.

SM: From my perspective, queer people are largely absent from the cultural discourse as it relates to specific materials or forms. Using sex and gender as a dividing line is more commonplace. For instance, women have traditionally been associated with textiles and surface decoration. Men, on the other hand, have been associated with wood and metal working. What I found through my conversations with artists and designers during “Ingrained,” however, is that contemporary women, non-binary and even cis-men find it hard to break into certain trades because of prevailing notions of how a certain material relates to sex and gender. 

ID: Performance and the making process are crucial elements of queer design today. How do you emphasize these steps that precede the finished work itself in your representation of the designers and exhibiting their work in your physical space?

SM: To me, this is one of the best parts of the job. Bringing people into the gallery, having them crouch under a table to see how the artist fitted pieces together to form the whole, or encourage them lift a vessel to feel the weight. I like to have them turn on or off the overhead lighting to get a sense of the ambiance a lamp might give and even have visitors smell a work are all ways to give the audience a sense of the material and what went in to making the work. It’s also a bit of a performance for me.

ID: You mainly work with young designers who came of age during the rise of the internet. What kind of parallels do you see between their physical works and the reality of a cyber space?

SM: Ryan Decker’s solo show Feudal Relief showcases the effect the digital world has on the physical. His works, while taking inspiration from Medieval art, have a computer-generated aesthetic, influenced by years of playing video games and creating digital art. The internet created an access to visual imagery and information that previous generations didn’t have. The masses of information consumed through online searches and experiences have created a prevailing contemporary style that blends aesthetics, references, and time periods. 

ID: What kind of reactions do you receive from collectors and the general public about the current panorama of queer designer as well as the future?

SM: Many collectors strive for diversity of representation in their collections. They are interested in supporting artists they might identify with or that gives them a window into a world they’re not accustomed to. Collectors and the public love learning about an artist’s background and how that may have influenced the work they produce.

10 Questions With… In Common With

Interior Design: Could you talk about the sculptural potential of light fixtures? Do you think about the idea that when turned off, light fixtures gain sculpture qualities?

In Common With: In fact, we think about this aspect often. What do light fixtures become when they’re off? The pieces we’ve made with Danny do live in that type of way. A lot of them have artwork qualities but they function as lights too. The new floor lamp, for example, holds so much presence in a room—it’s 5 feet tall whether it’s lit or not. We live with light fixtures but the majority of the time, they are not on, so this is a very important component of our thinking.

ID: The name In Common With references to a partnership but also a duality. Does the name represent your dynamic as well as your work with others?  

ICW: Collaboration was very important to us when we first decided to start this company, whether it’s with another designer artist, like Danny Kaplan, or with the interior designers, architects or anyone looking to buy a light fixture. Our whole ethos is to work with other people. We have our own design opinions, but the experience has been so much more when we add another opinion into the process.

ID: What are some of the rewards and challenges of collaborations?

ICW: Like any relationship, there are parts that are always amazing and those that are a struggle. The real element is being able to find the balance to come together and push all of our boundaries for something new. With Danny, for example, we work so well together because we’re able to see where everyone is at, and with the new collection, we’ve taken this to a new level. The objects look unlike any work any of us has made before, in ways that neither one of us or Danny probably would have done. This also applies to manufacturers we work with or the interior designers who we do special projects with for new ideas. Working with someone else comes with new constraints that push us to do things we just normally wouldn’t do. The challenge is to do the situation that pushes you to think in a different way.

ID: When washed with light, the materials gain new looks and textures. What is the role of materials in designing light objects?

ICW: Our backgrounds are both in furniture design, but our training is all material driven, and that interaction is really where our ideas start and stop. Even with the ceramic pieces, we push the boundaries of the material to make something more interesting than they are. From a perspective of light as well we think about how they’re going to be used and what type of light we want it to be. With Danny, the table and floor lamps are down lights for reading but the pendants give off an ambient glow. Light is something we always keep in the back of our minds, but we are always seeing what the material wants to let the light become and then use that as an inspiration.

With the ceramic material, the negative space between the light and the material is important—we keep in mind the idea of creating these interesting negative spaces within the fixture.

ID: Are there specific visual reactions you look for in materials in terms of their interactions with light?

ICW: We look into what the material wants to do and where we can push it to do so. With our glass collections, we’ve pushed the ways glass can be blown. In the same way, we have also pushed the colors we could use so they interact with the light in interesting ways. The ceramic works with Danny have really been driven by the material and the attention to how detailed the artistry could be.

ID: Ceramic has been gaining popularity both in fine art and design. How do you see this rise parallel to the escalated need for touch in reaction to technology’s impact on design?

ICW: Ceramic is probably one of the entryways to what people consider a very manual practice but we think about this moment beyond ceramic too. We have for example taken ceramics classes to test with the material. We are both very hands-on with the way that we learn and we prefer being able to physically do something instead of watching it on a computer. Our glass is also completely handmade, which can be a scarier skill to have. More than a trend, for us, the handmade is a timeless part of how we think about design and what it will be like moving forward.

ID: What prompted you to go towards a geometric form in your second iteration with Kaplan?

ICW: There’s one piece from the first collection, the Augustus, which has a flat bottom to it. We came up with that together, it was not something that Danny had ever done in his work before and it was one of the parts we thought was the strongest and most interesting. So we wanted to play up the flat planar geometry with some of the like organic pieces still in the collection, too. The simple geometry, I think, is what is most similar to a lot of our work outside of our collaboration with Danny. So I think a lot of it feels it’s right in the middle of where we’ve come together. A lot of the surface mounts and pendants… have that flat surface on the bottom, which are really unique and not present in a lot of other ceramic pieces. It feels really unique to us and different from all of our work.

ID: As light design continues to evolve in the wake of the pandemic, how has it prompted an interest and demand in design objects?

ICW: We started our company at the right time in 2018. Then we were more focused on hospitality, hotels and restaurants but with the pandemic, we saw a lot more people buying objects for their homes. This reality has somehow allowed us to hire more people and build the brand. Collecting has been embedded in European culture for a long time, and we’re just starting to see that in the U.S., people are invested in acquiring pieces that have the potential to become family heirlooms. This shift is also happening in the general culture, such as fashion. The pandemic however has expedited it for our industry, and we don’t think it will go away.

ID: Light fixtures are part of product design but they affect the overall interior. When lit, they impact the furniture, wallpaper, drapery, and the overall architecture. What do you think about this omnipresence?

ICW: After studying furniture, our intention was always to do both furniture and other things. The reason why we started off with lighting and has stuck with it for so long has been about how much it affects a space. Light is one of the easiest ways to change your space. You can just switch out the lights in your room and this will just make a big difference. Light has a much greater impact on our moods than a piece like a table or chair.

ID: Terra collection has an earthy color palette. How was your decision making process about the colors in a collaborative way?

ICW: Our first collaboration in 2020 was all in black and white, and now we have three new colors. We gravitate towards natural tones because they they fit everywhere and stay timeless. Think about a Noguchi lamp in a cream color—it will fit into any interior for the rest of time. I think that that’s what we think about when we’re choosing colors, too, is where’s this going to be? And like? How is it going to stand the test of time?

Design Duo HAOS Commits to Rules of the Film Movement Dogme 95

For Sophie Gelinet and Cédric Gepner, the French duo behind HAOS, seeing Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 film “Festen” was a turning point in their design philosophy. Shot with the filmmaker’s “Dogme 95 Manifesto” and “Vows of Chastity” in mind for a purified style of cinema, the film conveys what the duo calls “powerful emotion in a stripped down” aesthetic, inspiring them to experiment with a similar ideology in furniture design. 

“The manifesto resonated with our appreciation of what is going on in the design world, especially collectible design,” say Gelinet and Gepner who began with a refusal of costly materials and rare expertise. “The first benefit is that the value of the pieces cannot stem from anything else—the care is taken in their conception,” they share. Limiting production to craft techniques they could master in their workshop, the duo achieved what they consider “a freedom from outside influence to create many new possibilities in terms of experimentation.”

The fruits of HAOS’s practice currently are on view in their first New York exhibition, “Works of Sobriety,” at the West Village design gallery, Love House. Two chairs, a square table, a wall cabinet, a bookshelf, a screen divider, bedside table, a wall light, a table lamp, and a floor lamp occupy the gallery, which exhibits the duo’s fourth collection in a demurely domestic setting. 

Prior to encountering furniture, attendees step onto a deep brown floor-to-floor carpet utilized as a contrast to the clean-cut pieces in oak plywood and sheet aluminum throughout. The geometric intersections of the two materials result in pieces that allude to 1970s office aesthetics, as well as an unusually futuristic Dune-esque appearance—“austere yet playful,” they say—due to the aluminum’s medley with dark wood. 

“Spontaneity, proportion and clarity” guid the work, explain the Lisbon-based designers, pointing out that they created their bookshelf by bending thin aluminum without complex machinery. The metal legs of the dinner table are unexpectedly wide, lifting the thin wood surface and offering a sculptural finish to a functional furniture.  

10 Questions With…. Jane Atfield

“Designing with recycled materials was generally seen as being a bit weird and unconventional,” remembers the British designer Jane Atfield about the early ‘90s when she created her now iconic RCP2 chair with discarded plastic. “They were perceived as being of dubious quality and a ‘second best’ choice.” A furniture design student at the Royal College of Art at the time, Atfield found encouragement among her classmates, as well as her son, Noah, who enjoyed counting the vast range of radiant colors stemming from bits of suntan lotion and shampoo bottles used for the chair.

Upper East Side’s Emma Scully Gallery recently invited Atfield to revisit the chair, which now sits at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s collection, displaying a suite of chairs and a table in three new colors. RCP2 chair’s revival coincides with the design’s 30th anniversary and invites young designers and collectors to explore an early case study in environmental consciousness.

Soon after RCP2, Atfield opened her design practice MADE OF WASTE and continued her practice in sustainable design. Here, Atfield shares her path to creating sustainable pieces with Interior Design.

Interior Design: Could you talk about the changes you have witnessed in the design world in terms of environment consciousness since you first created RCP2?

Jane Atfield: We have this incredible and beautiful world that we are destroying. Wider recognition and understanding of this has been the biggest change in 30 years. Environmental awareness has gone from being marginalized to mainstream, and now there is a commitment towards nature and sustainability being at the heart of design. Many young designers especially are passionate about wanting to make the world a better place for everyone. Words such as eco-friendly, circularity, regenerative, net-zero and material ethics are embedded into their design thinking. Waste is increasingly being used as a starting point in furniture and everyday objects with imaginative new sources are explored, including agricultural, industrial and food remnants. 

Plastics were seen as a wonder material in the ‘90s. Now, there is a growing back lash with the anti-plastic movement. Even if all plastic chairs are from recycled sources, the effects of this are diminished if we are still drilling new oil fields. Designers are increasingly aware of the social and political environment they work in with issues like climate justice extending the climate change debate along with problems like greenwashing.

ID: Do you remember the reactions to your idea of designing with recycled material three decades ago?

JA: In the early days, I used to have a shopping bag full of recycled plastic samples that I would take to designers to try and entice them to incorporate the recycled material into their work. We made up some customized sheets for Philippe Starck, although the project did not progress. Jasper Morrison thought the material was ugly! However, the London-based architect Ben Kelly was really positive and used it extensively for desks and benches for the London Science Museum children’s center. MADE OF WASTE also sold the recycled plastic sheets directly to the public who used it for things like kitchen and bathroom surfaces.

ID:  How much information was available back then about the possibility of using recycled material in design?

JA: It was not easy to get information in those pre-internet days. Trade shows were important sources and also material libraries or contacting companies directly on the telephone or by fax.

ID: What type of role did MADE OF WASTE play in your exploration of recycled plastic over the years?

JA: MADE OF WASTE was set up in 1993 to research and develop recycled plastics using the U.K.’s post consumer plastics, and the resulting construction sheet materials were made available to architects and designers. Following on from developing the HDPE plastic from post-consumer bottles, other sources of raw material, including HIPS yogurt pots, Marks and Spencer coat hangers and discarded cling film from the catering industry, were evolved. I would often experiment with these materials in furniture design and explore their working properties before making them more widely available.

ID: Could you talk about your process of collecting plastic tubes and bottles back then? Are there moments and interactions that stayed with you?

JA: I started experimenting with recycled materials when, during my second year at the RCA, I came across a curious blue material sample on the desk of a fellow student studying sculpture.  They had bought it back from a New York trade fair, but the manufacturer’s name wasn’t on it.  I eventually found out it had been made by Yemm & Hart, and I got in touch with them to see if I could import some larger pieces. I was very interested in their approach and how they were connecting new materials with a wider societal context, namely the problems of plastic waste and using this as a resource. There was potential to incorporate the material into furniture, and it seemed like a good antidote to the slick, style driven furniture of the ’90s. Stephen Yemm shipped over some sheets for me to explore, and we started a dialogue over the material. I designed some furniture with it and this led to a commission for a student bar at the University of Westminster with the architect Joe Hagan in 1994.

In time, the need to find a way to fabricate the material in the U.K. was apparent, using our own plastic waste, as it was expensive and environmentally unfriendly to ship it over the Atlantic. This involved liaising with community recycling schemes to source the HDPE plastic bottles derived from discarded shampoo, detergent and milk containers which were then color sorted and chipped. Searching for the correct machinery to press the chips into construction sheets proved difficult, and in the end we used presses intended for manufacturing plywood at a factory in West London. The colors in the finished sheets reflected those of the plastic bottles in public circulation. When a new color was introduced by a bottle manufacturer—I remember a bright blue detergent—it was exciting to see it go from a supermarket shelf and later turn up integrated into the recycled plastic sheets. Ways were explored to develop community production facilities using local waste, for example, to recycled school plastic waste into classroom furniture. I remember approaching Camden Council with this idea, but there was unfortunately no investment for such schemes. In fact, it was difficult to get anyone to invest in MoW.

ID: The process somewhat dictated your aesthetic: Victoria & Alberts’s web entry about the chair, for example, says, “This chair is not painted as you might at first think.” Could you talk about this idea of prioritizing the material and process over the aesthetic?

JA: The recycled plastic was decorative without being decorated. I loved its expressive qualities, its directness and integrity. In order for this to sing out, I needed the design of the chair not to compete. Hence it was kept very simple with no emphasis on formal innovations. I wanted the chair to be archetypal so you would look beyond its function and focus on what it was made from. The first chair RCP1 made from the Yemm & Hart material was a version of Rietveld’s Crate Chair, using the recycled plastic as if it was reused plywood. The second chair, the RCP2, was inspired by his Military Chair of 1923. These references to Gerrit Rietveld were influenced by my Dutch modernist professor at the RCA who loved the DeStijl movement. The material has its own inherent aesthetic, dictated by the flowing pattern of the chipped up plastic bottles when heated and compressed during manufacture.

ID: How did you reconnect with Yemm & Hart three decades later?

JA: Emma [Scully] approached me last summer to suggest a re-edition of the chair using the original Yemm & Hart recycled plastic, with the chairs to be fabricated in New York. I had not been in contact with the company for over 20 years and was delighted to find they were still in business in Missouri. Stephen Yemm sent me lots of samples and the original Confetti multi-colored recycled plastic was still in production.

ID: What material and visual differences did you adopt in this new iteration?

JA: We decided to re-issue the chair in three color ways, the original Confetti, a blue version, and a newer black and white one. I specified the original ‘satin’ finish and it was very noticeable how the quality of the materials had improved with no paper labels or holes in the surface. The materials thickness remained constant throughout the sheet and hence the new RCP2 chairs could be made with greater precision, using CNC routing.

ID: What are some of the current sustainable design techniques that you feel inspired by?

JA: I love the idea of car-free cities, with the streets given over to bicycles and pedestrians such as the Superblock program being implemented in Barcelona aiming to increase shared public spaces, sociability, biodiversity and reduce pollution.

I am inspired by nature-based ideas including re-wilding projects, both rural like at the Knepp Estate in southern England and in cities such as the London National Park City proposal which aims to fully integrate people with nature and create green corridors connecting gardens, parks, woodlands, playing fields and allotments. Also I am encouraged by tree planting and the resurgence of community gardens and vegetable growing projects. The U.K. activists group Extinction Rebellion certainly gives me hope. They offer creative techniques and opportunities to help us face reality. Also offering hope is the increase in building with sustainable, natural materials and finding ways for all existing buildings to be recycled, along with progressive ideas for more communal living.  Projects such as El Catllar in Catalonia, Spain are converting old buildings into shared living, growing and working spaces to create a sustainable community.

Calls for dematerialization also resonate with me and the challenge of how to make that widely fashionable by celebrating less stuff. How can we go beyond ownership and focus instead on sharing and on forming new relationships, human and ecological together?

ID: The new collection also includes a dinner table which signifies gathering and community. How do you see design’s role today in social change?

This time of transition requires big shifts in deep-rooted behaviors and requires designers to have strongly held values, in addition to creativity and resourcefulness, that they can share in collaborations. There aren’t enough people thriving in the world, so design’s role must help improve lives for as many people as possible.

Masa Galeria’s First New York Exhibition Offers a Closer Look at Mexican Modernism

Since launching in 2018, nomadic Mexican design gallery Masa Galeria has called many sites home: an abandoned ruby-colored 1970s home in Paseo de las Palmas, a castle built by German royals in Mexico City’s Chapultepec district, or a white-washed Modernist villa in the city’s center. Therefore, it is no wonder the gallery founders Age Salajõe, Héctor Esrawe, and Brian Thoreen have selected a debunk post office sunken underneath the Rockefeller Center for their inaugural New York presentation, “Intervención/Intersección” on view through June 24, 2022.

Similar to past iterations, the show not just borrows the characteristics of its architecture—in this case, a corporate muteness and utilitarian details left intact since the office’s closure just over a month ago—as a backdrop but blends into its quirks and nooks. The site-specific show also spills outside and uses Rockefeller Plaza and its iconic flag poles to display works that take alternative gazes at Mexican Modernism. The gallery’s biggest show to date includes pieces by Pia Camil, Frida Escobedo, Pedro Reyes, MARROW, Mario Garcia Torres, Isamu Noguchi, Alma Allen, PANORAMMA, Thoreen, Esrawe, and Tania Canadani.

From the convoluted tie between Mexican Modernism and the Rockefeller Plaza (Diego Rivera’s mural Man at the Crossroads for the building was destroyed in 1934 before completion for claims of communist propaganda) to the building’s regal Art Deco presence, the show’s curator Su Wu makes parallels between the iconic venue and the art and design on display. 

“We have been thinking about this long history of intellectual and creative porosity between Mexico and the United States, but also wanting to see where there might be fissures or gaps in the established narrative,” Wu tells Interior Design, and adds: “There were many artists working contemporaneously to the three masters of Mexican muralism—José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros—but they remained lesser known because of their sexuality, poverty, or they were women or lived outside of Mexico City.” Wu notes that Masa Galeria’s curatorial approach stems from a similar interest in disrupting the hierarchies, including those between art and design. “It is amazing that design can encompass many more ideas than just this constant hierarchy.” 

Interior Design visited the show during installation and picked its highlights.

Pia Camil

Mexico City-based artist Pia Camil has long been interested in the value in collective use. From collecting the laundry of Marfa locals to hang on top of art institution Ballroom Marfa’s rooftop to sewing a massive wearable sculpture for the Guggenheim with T-shirts donated by East Harlem residents, Camil gives new life to the worn while elevating the existing history of textiles. Here, Camil’s installation of clothes exchanged with Mexico City residents claim the 193 poles normally used to raise the flags of each United Nations member country at the plaza. Camil’s largest public installation to date also includes a recording of testaments from the clothing donors about their relationships to the items.    

Alma Allen

Tepoztlán-based American sculptor Alma Allen’s biomorphic bronze pieces live both inside the 8,000 square foot gallery and in front of 30 Rock. Blending recent technology with traditional hand-forming techniques, Allen’s sleek sculptures contain the immediacy of hand gestures, pairing demureness of a formal aesthetic with human touch. Fittingly, Allen’s own foray into sculpture and the works’ exhibition in Masa’s show has a similar intersection of labor and serendipity—as well as good and bad luck. As a teenage runaway, Allen was hit by a truck in his first year in New York. While unable to work due to injury, he started carving his first sculptures out of wood and sell them in front of another now-bygone post office in Soho which currently houses an Apple store.  

Ana Pellicer

Michoacán-based sculptor Ana Pellicer has been working with copper and brass for five decades, in addition to running the artist colony the Adolfo Best-Maugard School of Arts and Crafts which she established with her late husband, sculptor James Metcalf. After studying at The Art Students League in New York and New School for Social Research, she returned to Mexico and became known for her intricate handling of hammered copper and brass in bodily forms. In this show, however, Pellicer pushes the limits of the body to mammoth scales. Her copper sculpture of a pin, which is blown up to a scale that would adorn the Statue of Liberty’s dress, carries ornate details of hammering, as well as a humorous take on bureaucracy and identity. “We are prompted to think how ornamentation can drive material innovation, as much as the idea of use,” explains Wu, adding that Pellicer’s school is committed to training women in copper beating to provide a path for self-reliance. 

Marrow Project

Whether Rafael Prieto and Loup Sarion named their design studio Marrow Project based on their favorite inspirational material is unclear, but the duo uses left over bones from dinner parties to source forms for their light fixtures. Made out of linen and powder coated steel, their warmly-lit sconces are far from resembling their original bases with their bulbous silhouettes. Minimalist and somewhat ghostly, the lamps are sculptural and mysterious, claiming their surroundings with their bulbous presence whether lit or off.  

Héctor Esrawe

Mexico City-based light designer Héctor Esrawe joins the show with a work from his poetically captivating Shifting Parábola series. Positioned next to TBC (2020), artist Jose Dávila’s wooden table sculpture humorously affixed onto the wall in a vertical form with red ratchet strap and eyebolt (which Wu explains as being “about seeking equilibrium and finding balance”), the curved metal light fixture echoes a gently bent thin paper yet in larger-than-life scale. The kinetic curve of an unlikely material recalls the felt sculptures of American Minimalist Robert Morris, however, Esrawe elevates the optic potential of his material and lets brass play with light. In addition to natural light’s washes on various point of curve, the fixtures the designer hides in the form’s intersections accentuate the corners of tension. 

Frida Escobedo

Fresh from being announced as the architect to helm The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s renovation of its modern and contemporary galleries, Mexico City-based architect and designer Frida Escobedo makes her appearance at another iconic New York landmark. Escobar’s iron and nickel-finished ball chain chair, Creek Bench, claims a back room, its elongated metallic chains crawling across the off-white floor. Performative and biomorphic, the dramatic seating transforms the industrial sleekness of nickel into a liquid mass. “Frida’s work in architecture and design shows that underlying structures can change human behavior—in this case, the underlying structure taking a chain and material of bondage and turn it into a system of support,” says Wu. 

Ewe Studio

The bronze Memoria stools in doughy forms are a result of Mexico City-based Ewe Studio’s exploration of residue foundry molds as potentials for furniture. The studio turned molds from their former series, which is based on vernacular stools commonly used throughout Mexico for everyday practicality, into what the studio co-founder Age Salajõe calls “the molds of a memory of a memory.” The sand cast bronze stools contain uneven surfaces, perhaps due to their double molding processes, and pay homage to labor and sentimentality attached to their very original source materials.   

Highlights from the 60th Edition of The Philadelphia Show

These days, there is a massive pyramid-like white tent positioned outside the east wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The eye-catching canopy was made in Germany to host the 60th edition of The Philadelphia Show, the city’s symbolic art, design, and antique fair. After virtual shows in 2020 and 2021, the fair is not only dressed with an impressive home right outside the iconic “Rocky steps” but also packed with the select examples of objects that span classical European furniture to contemporary art. “There is an incredible momentum and pent-up excitement for our fair’s return because art and antiques are ultimately to be experienced in person,” says the fair’s co-chair Lynn Gadsden. 

A total of 42 exhibitors from Pennsylvania, Maine, Connecticut, New York, Delaware, and few from Midwest prove Gadsden’s point with inviting booths, in addition to the traditional loan exhibition, titled Zero to Thirty this year and dedicated to the fair’s 60th anniversary. Fittingly, the show’s 13 objects exemplify the scope of American Decorative Arts with a selection by Philadelphia Museum of Art’s curator of American Decorative Arts, Alexandra Kirtley, and collector Joan Johnson. Positioned at the center of the tent, the exhibit includes a selection of miniature furniture made by Denis Ralph H. Keeler for his daughter between 1922 and 1943, a 19th century Shaker dropleaf tailor’s table, and a copper deer sculpture attributed to the Massachusetts’s own metal casting firm A.L. Jewell & Company and believed to be from 1860s. 

After being hosted at various venues throughout the city and supporting the hospital at UPenn for decades, this year’s edition benefits the Philadelphia Museum of Art and includes virtual panels on the state of design with the curators of the institution. “One of our main goals is to educate the collectors, as well as the general public, about design and why objects matter,” adds Huntley Platt, the fair’s show manager. Platt also underlines that all of this year’s galleries feature returning exhibitors. 

Read Interior Design’s highlights from The Philadelphia Show which runs through May 1.

Moderne Gallery

Philadelphia’s own Mid-Century gallery Moderne, which boats 16,000 square feet of space in the city’s Port Richmond, offers a slice of its programming with a range of the finest examples from American design in the mid-20th century. The wood-heavy display includes stunning works by George Nakashima, such as a long chair made out of cherry tree wood and woven sea-grass from 1952. A wide single board walnut wall drawer manifests the late Japanese American designer’s commitment to fine lines and smooth finishes while emphasizing a sleek aesthetic. 

Jeff R. Bridgman American Antiques 

Flag is a less commonly explored direction in antique-collecting, but for those who are interested, Pennsylvania dealer Jeff R. Bridgman is the booth to visit. From war era flags, such as those from the Civil War and the Revolutionary War, the canvas banners on view have painterly qualities beyond their patriotic content and reflect their eras’ art and design trends as decorative accents today.

Diana H. Bittel Antiques 

A serving tray is another rare find at an antique fair, and the example decorated with a biblical scene at Diana H. Bittel Antiques’s booth shows that a platter can be a scene-stealer, too. Illustrated with a lush palette in autumn colors, the juxtaposition includes Adam surrounded by numerous animals while pointing at the serpentine snake in a gesture that recalls of miniature art. The early to mid-19th century tin tray, which is one of five that depicts various scenes, among many alternative objects that the gallery offers, including marine-themed paintings to shell valentines and Napoleon-era prisoners-of-war items.

Glen Leroux Antiques

Connecticut-based dealer Glen Leroux brings a sophisticated selection of its Mid-Century Modern roster, including Karl Springer’s wooden striped table from 1960s. The late German designer’s black and ruby-colored square furniture is both playful and elegant, a striking example of sculpture’s merger with functional design with its Op-Art-inspired pattern and geometric form.  A pair of cream lacquered cane custom finish Ward Bennet chairs are classic examples of the bentwood technique from 1960s. 

Kelly Kinzle

The fair is also known for its emphasis on American folk art, and the New Oxford-based dealer Kelly Kinzle is the ideal stop for art and furniture that pays homage to the tradition which is today often times considered within the realm of outsider art. The fans of American folk art will notice the walnut, maple, and cherry table with an inlaid waving American flag and carved gun motifs on its legs. The table from 1860s is singed with a notice that reads “made and designed by F. Wedin, Roxbury.” 

Lillian Nassau LLC

New York’s established gallery Lillian Nassau is recognized for its speciality in Tiffany glass, whether an intimate example of the glassmaker’s favrile pottery or windows. The gallery has brought Philadelphia a rosewater sprinkler from late 19th century, a “lotus” temple lamp from the early 20th century as well as a flower-shaped vase. An interesting to the glass orchestration is Wendell Castle’s soft-edged walnut music stand that echoes a music key in its form.

Bernard & S. Levy Dean Antiques

Another New Yorker, Bernard & S. Levy Dean Antiques brings a selection fitted for Philadelphia’s role in American history, such as a federal worktable from the early 19th century to a French mantle clock that shows George Washington with an eagle from around 1820. The booth’s most striking offer, however, is a sideboard by Boston’s Federal period furniture maker father and son John and Thomas Seymour, also from the early 19th century. 

Salon 94 Design Restages Kate Millett’s Judson installation, ‘Fantasy Furniture, 1967’

In the mid 1960’s, Kate Millett was busy creating a series of anthropomorphic pieces of furniture in her New York one-bedroom apartment, which she shared with her then-husband, sculptor Fumio Yoshimura. Fresh from studying sculpture in Japan, the thirtysomething feminist theorist, activist, and artist found herself surrounded by the DIY creativity of downtown Manhattan. The local hardware stores, cabinetries, seamstresses, and cobblers on the Bowery, where Millett lived, provided her with the material resources for carved-wood stools with human legs and leather shoes, a piano with its own pair of hands hovering above the keyboard, and other household items with humanoid appendages.

In 1967, the Judson Gallery, one of the era’s most influential avant-garde art spaces, exhibited the witty pieces in an interior-like installation titled “Furniture Suite.” Millett’s seminal book Sexual Politics, which, like her artwork, critiqued patriarchal domesticity, would come out three years later, establishing its author as an international feminist leader whose fame would carry her to the cover of Time magazine in August of 1970.

For more than five decades, the nine objects sat in the Upstate barn Millett shared with her life partner, Sophie Keir. Seeing guests interact with the pieces over the years encouraged the artist to expand Fantasy Furniture, as she came to refer to the collection. But she never made a return to the series. “A woman doing more than one job was quite unusual at the time. As a compartmentalized thinker, Kate felt her scholarly work was being questioned due to her furniture-maker side,” notes Kier, who runs the late artist’s estate.

This winter, however, New York gallery Salon 94 Design restaged the Judson installation as “Fantasy Furniture, 1967.” “I was fascinated by how Millett diffused an element of play to her anger for being stuck with inanimate house objects and a husband,” Salon 94 owner Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn says. “As a scholar who was so occupied by women’s rights, she had to develop a sense of humor to stay sane,” Keir adds. The show demonstrated that the human-furniture hybrids still hold a punch, playfully tackling the dysfunction of domestic union and codependency.

Today, Keir and Greenberg Rohatyn rank Millett the artist alongside her New York contemporaries Marisol Escobar, Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama, and others who cemented the period’s boundary-pushing women’s art. “A time capsule of feminist history,” is how the dealer describes the show. As a new generation discovers Millett’s oeuvre on gender liberation, Keir believes her partner’s art furniture will be a significant part of the revival.