{"id":595283,"date":"2025-12-15T11:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T16:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/design-milk.com\/?p=595283"},"modified":"2025-12-11T12:05:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T17:05:49","slug":"10-highlights-from-design-miami-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/design-milk.com\/10-highlights-from-design-miami-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Highlights From Design Miami 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ever the preeminent fair for collectible art furniture and complementary furnishings, Design Miami<\/a><\/strong> returned for its official 20th edition with an expanded roster of over 80 exhibitors. Together, they presented big, fluffy, and playful but also restrained works. Materials and color palettes were bright and airy. Joining the expected crop of well-established blue-chip galleries were newcomers: fresh platforms, independent producers, dynamic brands, and even notable architecture firms getting in on the functional sculpture game. This strong showing was bolstered by the announcement of Design Miami\u2019s growth into the increasingly popular Middle Eastern market with a 2027 Dubai edition.<\/p>\n The decidedly exuberant showcase was an about-face to all the heaviness, and bulkiness of the past few years. As with much of the design industry today, whimsical and historically referential flourishes were all the rage as were revisited industrial processes, naturalistic treatments, the undying allure of craft-led material exploration, and nonconformist composition.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s theme of Make. Believe. \u2013 put forward by noted critic, historian, and Design Miami curatorial director Glenn Adamson<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 hints at a more optimistically speculative role for a domain that should foster experimentation, not just mere decoration. And yet, it didn\u2019t hurt that a renewed attention to comprehensive scenography (set design) \u2013 rather than\u00a0 bombastic immersive experience \u2013 made it easier, even more enticing, to engage with these pieces. The focus was as much on contemporary output as the vast array of eclectic vintage design available today.<\/p>\n The following selection \u2013 serial and one-of-one luminaires, room dividers, sofas, tables, and even rugs \u2013 made our cut. These 10 highlights represent a range of themes and preoccupations currently driving the ever refined if still niche world of collectible design.<\/p>\n Known for their deft harnessing and reinterpretation of craft techniques specific to different parts of the world, Malika Leiper and Stephen Burks, of studio Stephen Burks Man Made<\/strong><\/a>, promote hand production as a means of innovation. They often do so by transferring the qualities of one material or technique in another application. This approach is fully apparent in The Lost Cloth Object capsule collection the duo created for the Glenn Adamson-curated Design Miami 2.0 showcase in partnership with ever-inventive Italian wood surfaces brand ALPI<\/a><\/strong>. Comprising a rocking stool, rocking ottoman, and slightly concave room divider, the exploration centers on the idea of “transferring” the distinctive geometric patterns of ancient Kuba Kingdom textile traditions in thinly cut and layered veneer wood. Accounting for a sharp contrast in tone, the materials included \u2013 ebony, teak, wenge, rosewood, and zebrawood \u2013 are normally endangered species that the brand responsibly grows and mills.<\/p>\n Naturalism has re-emerged as a popular stylistic treatment lately, certainly as an ongoing Art Deco revival continues to gain traction. Taking this trend a step further is Mexico City-based “design laboratory” Sten Studio<\/a><\/strong>. At Design Miami, the studio debuted its Lithic Bloom series; totemic, stacked-form sculptures that take on the representational, relief-cut contour of petals, leaves, and organic forms in an eclectic array of natural stones. Demonstrating how these various assemblages \u2013 some more functional than others \u2013 could be presented together as a sort of dreamscape botanical garden, Sten Studio staged its booth with green carpeting, subtle bird soundscapes, and diffused scents. Taking pride of place: Peonara \u2013 a stool inspired by peonies; Folia \u2013 an auxiliary table shaped like leaves; and Hydraea chair \u2013 a settee carved out of blue calcite to evoke the flow of water.<\/p>\n The gently articulated flourishes stemming from Argentinian artist Conie Vallese\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> Fonderia Fendi chair, bench, and room divider are equally pictorial, but also fantastical. These meticulously stylized appendages emerge from the thin rosy bronze open frame structures. These armatures \u2013 crafted by age-old Milanese foundry Fonderia Battaglia<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 also hold-taught leather sheets carefully treated and colored within Fendi\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> workshops. The \u201cromantic\u201d collection was developed to commemorate the Italian fashion house\u2019s centenary, as well as the lasting value of the country\u2019s rich artisanal heritage. Other heavy hitters \u2013 ceramics studio Officine Saffi Lab, carpet weavers cc-tapis, and the 13th century Venetian glass studio Barovier&Toso \u2013 were also involved; responsible for various subtly introduced decorative details. The room divider, in particular, embodies the visceral tension between the imperfection of the human hand forming material and the precision of carefully proportioned architectonic composition.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>Standing well over 70-inches tall and swaying off to one side like a bold, intrepid perennial, sculptor Karen Atta\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> cast resin Cloudbusting sculpture rises well above the rest. Defined by its fluted flower head rim that gives way to a recessed void, the semi-transparent gray-blue totem \u2013 presented by Tuleste Factory<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 stems from the Lebanese-American artist’s ongoing exploration of nature, science, and the supernatural. This stylistic detail, a refined, almost geometric distillation of naturally occurring formation, appears to contract and is expanded as its base takes on the near-similar dimension of its top. Its spiked extremities hint at an impish undertone but all in good jest.<\/p>\n An ever-alluring and apparently malleable material, bronze also cropped up in fiber artist Carl Johnson’s<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0latest 2025 and 22 Gauge Bronze Wire pendant lamps, presented by Savannah College of Art (SCAD<\/strong>)<\/a> within its Haptic Enchantment and Sculptural Sorcery showcase. Exploring the tension between softness and rigidity, the flowing forms were created using bronze wire; an application rendering the otherwise solid metal into tensile and weavable strands. Blended with cotton, the material adds an iridescent, light refracting quality to what first seems like a billowing burlap sack suspended as a lampshade. The striation of each thread extends the illumination even further, evoking an ethereal, if also whimsical quality.<\/p>\n Also imbued with nuanced gestures of fluted, even squiggly, contours, French duo Marie et Alexandre’s<\/a><\/strong> decidedly pared-back Table CR features anodized aluminum stretchers with a wave-like pattern. This stylistic flex suggests a degree of satire, a riff-on the hard-line conformity of industrial precision through subtle deformation. Presented by recently established and edgy Paris platform Galerie Sign\u00e9<\/strong><\/a>, as part of its first Design Miami showcase, the piece was first developed in response to the careful restoration of Apartment 50 of Le Corbusier\u2019s Cit\u00e9 Radieuse in Marseilles by architects Jean-Marc Drut and Patrick Blauwart. The systemized adjustable leg and table top design champions the early modernist architect\u2019s ability to temper ordered form with a hint of organicist folly. In true proto-modernist fashion \u2013 the principle of honest, unconcealed assembly \u2013 Table CR\u2019s top features faint dents indicating where the legs are positioned.<\/p>\n Also experimenting with how industrial materials can be naturalized even humanized, New York-based ceramic designer Scott Daniel Strickstein<\/strong><\/a> has perfected a craft-led process all his own: dipping various iterations of metal mesh structures in slip clay. The resulting forms \u2013 like the Bloom Chandelier, presented by Paris-based Galerie Sc\u00e8ne Ouverte<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 soften the shapes as intricate honeycomb-like compositions. When affixed to a light source, these sculptures illuminate like jewel boxes. Much like the other works highlighted in this selection, Bloom takes on the subtle, oft-irregular qualities of a budding flower, with its various components abstractly resembling individual petals.<\/p>\n Organicism was also the driving force behind boutique Massachusetts-based rug brand Merida Studio’s<\/strong><\/a> \u201cLiving in Ma\u201d display. Meant to offer fairgoers a moment of visual reprieve, the softly hued, monochromatic booth emulated the Japanese concept of finding pause between things. On view were equally contemplative artist proof rug concepts by in-house designer Sylvie Johnson<\/strong><\/a>. Showcasing the producer’s ability to create contrast within tone-on-tone composition is the all-white, stadium-shaped Yang design. The amoebic cut-away forms are distinguished by the variation of implemented technique.<\/p>\n Maverick ceramicist Nicole Cherubini<\/strong><\/a> implements the medium to construct dysfunctional objects, in this case an oversized vase taking on human-scale proportions and the formation of a totem. Created using the unexpected pairing of white earthenware, terracotta, grog, epoxy, acrylic paint, and spray paint, Diagram of Love is a layered repository of references, recording various moments of use and prescribed meaning. The unashamedly grotesque and irreverent piece was presented by Friedman Benda<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n1. The Lost Cloth Object by Stephen Burks Man Made for ALPI <\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n2. Lithic Bloom by Sten Studio<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n3. Fonderia Fendi by Conie Vallese for Fendi <\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n4. Cloudbusting by Karen Atta<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n5. 2025 Cotton and 22 Gauge Bronze Wire by Carl Johnson<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n6. Table CR by Marie et Alexandre<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n7. Bloom Chandelier by Scott Daniel Strickstein<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n8. Yang by Sylvie Johnson<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n9. Diagram of Love by Nicole Cherubini <\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n10. R O O T collection by Roham Shamekh<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n