Emotion Over Buzz
What will take to transform design objects from commodities back into everyday art?
Last week, Dan Thawley and Matthieu Pinet wrapped up the second installment of MATTER and SHARE - a new design saloon hosted in Paris during Fashion Week. It looked like the perfect fusion of youth and legacy, art and commerce, intimacy and access. Or at the very least, it sounded like the rare type of industry events where anyone from blue chip collectors to students and design enthusiasts could rub shoulders and actually have a fun time. Gohar World built a pedestal out of giant sugar cubes for a curation of archival Lobmeyr pieces to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the brand’s exhibit at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs. Benoit Lalloz, a light studio based in Paris, whose fixtures are installed in every Acne Studios, designed a new iteration of their light and scent diffusor produced in collaboration with Byredo. Jil Sanders sponsored a lineup of Design Talks where architects, writers, and curators spoke about the relationship between architecture and advocacy, past and present, professional and private. At its core, MATTER and SHAPE is supposed to become if not the answer to the issues that are crippling traditional design fairs and the industry at large — social media trends and seasonality, mass consumerism, and outdated formats — then an invitation to reflect and have an open conversation about them.
Over the past decade, just like luxury fashion and premium beauty, design has rapidly transitioned from a niche artful hobby to a mainstream commercial venture. What felt like an anecdotal experience of putting lots of effort and money into decorating my first NYC apartment at the tail of the pandemic and ending up in a home filled with a bunch of pop design objects that went viral on social media soon thereafter, was actually representative of a larger trend. When everyone was forced to spend most of their time scrolling through social media feed and making sourdough in 2020, the home decor market grew by a record 7.31%, reaching an evaluation of over $116B. The mecca of pop design, the MoMA Design Store experienced a 20% rise in transactions each year since 2020 and posted its strongest sales to date in 2022. A fashion e-commerce platform SSENSE introduced the Everything Else section to the website in December 2020, adding luxury design objects to its curation, and a cross-category marketplace for tastemakers Basic.Space that was founded the same year, would go on to raise $23M. Even today, despite everyone more or less returning to their pre-pandemic routines, the interest in aesthetic living remains strong with the home decor market projected to reach $139B by the end of 2025.
While design becoming more accessible to the masses is a largely positive trend, it has also done a lot of damage to the way we think about individual objects. If for older generations, design was something they needed to “get into", younger generations fall into it — once the industry knows that you have enough money to splurge on a sectional couch or at the very least, a colorful cutting board that would add a much needed color accent to your boring rental, they start actively luring you. And the way they go about it isn’t ideal — instead of educating the masses about the significance of certain makers, materials, and styles, most design brands with a mass market ambition dangle colorful kitchenware and furniture that looks like it belong in a playroom, and say something along the lines of “wouldn’t it be so cute to have something like that in your home?” And while this might be the right choice of language for design brands looking to expand their business quickly, it also erases the necessary friction between the audience and the makers and fills our homes with a bunch of memable objects that we treat as commodities meant to create the optics of taste, rather than unique, artful objects.
Reverting back to small feels like the latest trend across all creative industries that blew up quickly. Rachel Tashjian reported back from Paris Fashion Week that smaller shows, smaller budgets, and smaller guest lists were the mantra of the season. “Recently we feel that big business, big culture, global systems, world structures maybe are not so great after all,” she quoted Comme des Garçons’ show notes. “There is also strong value in small. Small can be mighty.” If a few years ago, we were in a transitional moment where meta commentary on the rapid commercialization of fashion and the culture at large made brands, like Vetements and Balenciaga, hot and financially successful, today, this messaging is so depressingly mainstream that both the people in creative industries and the public at large, have a renewed level of appreciation for sincerity and dedication to the craft. “This is not a time for brands (or anyone creative, whether they’re making clothes, books or movies) to be cynical,” Tashjian concluded. “It is time to offer another way forward. The future is terrifying, but for better or worse, it is a designer’s job to help show us what it could look like.”
Over in Los Angeles, Jesse Lee, the founder of the art and design marketplace Basic.Space that blew up in 2020, seems to be on the same wavelength. He is redirecting the focus of his team from the rapid growth of their digital platform to creating meaningful hybrid experiences for a smaller group of engaged art and design enthusiasts. After acquiring Design Miami, the host of some of the most visible design fairs in the world, they are merging the two brands together into Design.Space — seven-day design shopping events with invitation-only IRL previews and an e-commerce element open to the general public. They are also restricting the access to the Basic.Space app to a limited number of carefully curated members. “As a venture-backed startup, you think that you’re supposed to hit certain amount of growth rate year over year. I think we kind of fell into that trap,” Lee told Christopher Michael on the What’s Contemporary Now podcast. “Basic.Space was born out of curation…but I’d be the first to admit — after a couple of years, we sort of got away from that because, okay, we need more sellers to get more customers,” he continued. “We lost a little of that specialness from the beginning.”
It takes time and patience to create high-quality experiences, products, and content and put them in front of carefully curated audiences instead of anxiously optimizing for virality and growth like everyone else, but that is what it takes to build a premium brand for a discerning audience. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen so many gimmicks on the runway and in showrooms that coming across creatives that are quietly but surely building something special feels instantly intriguing.
A little while ago, I stumbled upon Akua Objects’ “poetic tableware” designed by Annika Zobel Agerled and Josefine Arthur in Copenhagen and handmade by glassmakers in Bohemia and Murano. It’s tough to explain what exactly stood out to me — all I know is both their objects and their campaigns exude the type of magic you want to harness in your home and share with others. There are a couple of things they do differently — instead of running traditional marketing campaigns, they create “table poems.” “Most people can find poetic moments in their homes, especially around a table where memories are often created,” Josefine explained. “When we engage in art direction, Annika’s focus is on facilitating a feeling or narrative rather than simply showcasing a product without a story behind it.” “For us, poetry serves as a metaphorical language that evokes emotions and tells stories, allowing us to express complex feelings or thoughts in a compact form,” she continued. “Glassmaking is an art form that has, unfortunately, been forgotten by many and lost respect in the industrial era; therefore, we believe that a mouth-blown glass object, steeped in deep heritage, deserves to be framed within a poetic context.”
What’s also interesting is that the visual components of Akua Objects’ “table poems” are shot by fashion rather than product photographers, like Hasse Nielsen and Sascha Oda Adler, and that’s not just because the founders have a fashion background. “All of the photographers we choose to work with are light nerds and understand the beauty of shadows, incidence of light and staging the right daylight or rays of sun,” Annika told me. “This is very important for us because we are working with translucent objects. The difference between [photographing clothes and tableware] is that when working with fashion it’s all about creating an illusion and setting trends. I appreciate the timeless and more sculptural approach to my work, focusing on the silhouette, the overall aesthetic, and creating memorable pictures.”
What I still couldn’t wrap my head around though is how brands, like Akua, can balance their artful nature and commercial ambitions — how do they market products without getting overexposed and slipping into the pop design category? “Akua is grounded in emotions; our emotional compass guides us rather than conventional marketing considerations,” Annika explained. “We pursue what feels right, and as long as we trust our instincts, we believe the chances of ending up in a dystopian scenario are significantly reduced.”
Something similar is happening at Laguna~B — a much larger glassware brand with much longer history. Initially founded by Marie Brandolini in the 90s, a Parisian who left New York in pursuit of glassmaking in Venice, the studio reinterpreted informal glassware traditionally made from a mix of scraps into collectible, functional art pieces sold both in department stores and auctions all over the world. Given how traditional and misogynistic the glassmaking industry was at the time (and largely, still is), Laguna~B was a radical and modern business. So, when Marie’s son Marcantonio Brandolini took over the company in 2016, his priority was to not only preserve its history and creativity but also carry on that youthful and contemporary spirit.
Looking through Laguna~B’s catalogue, I quickly realized that they made those charming striped vases for Bottega Veneta’s artisanal craft showcase last year, which feels in line with Marcantonio’s vision for the brand that he shared in a Town and Country profile a few months prior: “The main goal is to produce the highest-quality drinking glasses on the planet. Ones made with such elegance and artistry they become collectible artworks.” What I found the most fascinating though is that Marcantonio’s strategy for achieving the brand’s global ambitions isn’t limited to designing beautiful, high-quality objects and working with global luxury brands. Initiatives designed to reestablish Venice’s cultural relevance and reinvigorate the passion for glassmaking among the younger generation of artists and designers are also a big part of it.
Over the past couple of years, Laguna~B has transformed its newsletter into an editorial and finally, launched a digital magazine featuring essays, interviews, and articles about all things creativity and craftsmanship earlier this year. They also launched Autonoma Next - an international student program designed to expose more young artists and designers to glassmaking. In 2023, they facilitated a two-week residency at the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington for an international group of students and instructors, and in 2024, they invited students from Chicago affected by gun violence for a 10-day glassmaking workshop in Murano. “It should not be the idea that the output of craft is an object of high luxury,” Marcantonio told Vogue in his 2023 profile. “Crafts should bring people together, make people happy about their lives, and inspire passion.”
Reviving the interest in glassmaking among younger creatives and artists does, in fact, seem like one of the strongest driving forces behind glassmaking slowly gaining back its footing in the art world after losing its reputation as an art form during the industrial years. There are quite a few creatives, like Marcantonio himself, who are taking over their family workshops and modernizing their designs and business practices to be in touch with the current state of the world. But there are also those who, like Justine Menard, are stumbling upon it after years of studying fashion and making jewelry and using that outside expertise and fresh ideas to push the boundaries of what a glassmaking practice is supposed to look like. Justine’s repertoire that ranges from the functional pieces, like glassware sets, to aesthetic jewelry pieces, like rings and brooches, to conceptual objects, like the series of beauty tools she created for Mid/night cosmetics, is a perfect example of that.
What all these younger creatives have in common is that while they welcome and actively pursue opportunities for global impact and exposure, they also understand the compounding value of personal relationships and touching individual lives. Whether it’s a glass you keep on your bedside table, a design fair installation, or a photograph you see on social media, it’s designed to provoke emotion rather than generate buzz. To them, focusing on the small doesn’t mean giving up on commercial ambitions but rather, mastering the craft of tuning out the noise in favor of perfecting the details that will eventually change the big picture.
IN THE MARGINS
Big changes are coming to Busy Corner starting next week — Writer Rolodex will fold into a cross-industry Talent Rolodex, there will be a new side feed for me to share things I am reading, watching, and doing, and the whole thing will look different (you may have noticed the changes I’ve already started making on IG). Until then, I am adding a bunch of new magazines to the Indie Media guide, a couple of new stores to the Independent Retail list, and a bunch of new references to the Reference Bank once I am done with this project deadline I got today.
I cannot love this enough