This week gallery representatives, advisers and collectors alike have been crowding into Karl Lagerfeld’s former home at the Hôtel de Maisons in Saint-Germain-des-Prés for Design Miami Paris. Prices, provenance and acquisitions were discussed in hushed tones as the design and art market got down to business at the event.
Highlights included the Designers of Tomorrow showcase, a collaboration between Design Miami Paris and Apple. Curated by Rodman Primack, it brought together four emerging studios with the theme of “Design for Presence”. Among its contributors is New York-based Isabel Rower, who presented “Padded Chair 1860”, a 19th-century boudoir-inspired seat with a fringe made of 1,500 ceramic beads. For Rower, a craft’s sense of presence begins in the making, especially with the surrender that ceramic requires: colour and finish are never predictable. “There is this inherent embracing of the presence of the present, of opening the kiln and relinquishing any control,” she says. The slow, laborious, ritualistic process brought her a “monastic” kind of presence. “Rower has created an invitation to sit,” says Primack, explaining that the piece invites people to remain still – to pause. But touch the beads and a soft clatter interrupts the expected moment of rest, drawing attention to the body and its surroundings. “It wakes you up,” adds Rower.
But the chair was not the only work to reward reflection at Design Miami Paris. Wrapping up tomorrow, the multi-day showcase of collectible design – from one-off pieces to antique treasures – was steered by curatorial director, Charlene Prempeh. Here are three other studios and galleries that caught Monocle’s eye.
The A/P Room
UAE
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Based in Dubai, The A/P Room made its Paris debut at Design Miami Paris with a presentation of international designers that pushed materials into unexpected territory. California-based artist Rogan Gregory, for one, brought the farm to the table. His almost-two-metre-long upholstered chandelier combines goat fur with gypsum, while his smaller sculptural lights bring together bronze and horse hair.
theaproom.com
Pulp Galerie
France
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Paris-based Pulp Galerie also made a bold first entrance to Design Miami, with orange walls and a prime spot by the doors of the Hôtel de Maisons. Specialising in design from the 1980s to the 2000s, the gallery’s manifesto reads, “style before function, form above all”. Gaetano Pesce’s Canovaci lights embody this spirit. Made with Italian glassmaker Venini, the luminaries are a ludic nod to laundry strung across Italian alleyways.
pulpgalerie.com
Galerie Scène Ouverte
France
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At the presentation of “Around a Desk”, Galerie Scène Ouverte turned the 18th-century room into a sculptural office space. Made from peeled and unfurled layers of maillechort (nickel silver), Studio Lugo’s desk and library evoke the organic. “The manufacturing process is not concealed; it is highlighted, embraced and placed at the very heart of the creative gesture. A sculptural horizontality serves a functional object whose layers of metal unfold like geological strata or petals”, says founder Laurence Bonnel.
galerie-sceneouverte.com
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