Thanks to the internet, design doesn’t need a passport. Yet designers are crossing oceans for fairs in Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Barcelona, Dubai, Brussels and South Africa in record numbers. (Those are just the design shows in the past two months.) Why the pull to travel when nearly every product is a click away? The most resonant art objects and furnishings still carry the imprint of where they originate, a patina of culture, craft and climate that no algorithmic internet search can replicate. These pieces have an aura and authenticity that can’t be fully conveyed through photography or digital copies. You have to be there, go directly to the source.
To glimpse a snapshot of the global design landscape, I asked leading designers, artists, manufacturers, gallerists and makers to share the international creators and markets that continue to expand their imaginations. What emerged is a portrait of the international design scene in dialogue between old and new, local and cosmopolitan, tradition and reinvention. From English ateliers to South African galleries, great design is inseparable from its origin, even as it finds its home abroad.
Craft has a cultural signature
For Katy Momeni Repetto, Creative Director at Momeni Rugs, national identity is built into the very structure of the rug world. “Our goal is to focus on [a] country’s quality strengths, whether it’s hand-knotted from India, machine-made rugs from Turkey, outdoor rugs from Egypt, or printed rugs from China,” she says. “Each collection has a unique story to tell… combined with the talented artisans who give the rugs their own character and originality.” By working with the countries that do each best, they are able to offer the U.S. market the widest variety and cater to a range of market sectors, Repetto says. While not everyone I spoke to has the same goal of appealing to the largest possible market segment, the through line amongst the designers, makers and manufacturers alike, when asked about traveling for inspiration and sourcing abroad was a pursuit of excellence and authenticity.
Take Ukrainian architect and designer Victoria Yakusha, for example, who offers a more metaphysical take. Known for what she calls living minimalism, she centers her work on cultural memory and storytelling. Her work focuses heavily on “Mythology and animism—objects filled with stories, energy, and memory,” of where they are from, she says. Her upcoming presentation at Design Miami this December will feature anthropomorphized sculptural figures and seating, pictured below.
Layers of legacy
Across the channel, British design continues to shape interiors far beyond its borders, where designers are creating the antiques of the future, while being inspired by the antiques of the past. “British design has always been about a quiet layering of pattern, colour, and history,” says Birdie Fortescue, whose Norfolk-based studio draws on Continental antiques and travels across Europe and Asia (and who recently presented their collections to the US market for the first time this month). “Designed in our Norfolk studio… every product has been crafted with future heritage in mind,” she says, emphasizing a lived-in elegance that resonates in the United States.
That relationship to English heritage takes on a personal dimension for Isabel “Isy” Jackson, founder of Chelt Interiors, whose family is deeply entrenched in the world of polo, and whose late uncle worked closely with King Charles. “The level of craftsmanship, historical narrative, and regal elegance [of the Royal Collection] is simply unmatched,” she says. “[It is] not something you can easily replicate or find in the U.S. Their pieces carry a sense of story and provenance that appeals to clients who want more than just décor, they want meaning and connection. For me, the Royal Collection is more than a brand,” she says, “It represents a philosophy: that beauty, tradition, and craftsmanship matter. And that’s something my clients truly value, especially American clients looking for that ‘British touch’.” Like Fortescue, Jackson emphasizes the English design scene’s focus on preserving historically British antiques and updating them for modern sensibilities.
Markets as cultural microcosms
Paris, of course, is another of Europe’s aesthetic and cultural epicenters where craft is not merely preserved but pushed forward. Designer Thomas Pheasant recently collaborated with Ateliers Fey, a leather atelier established in 1910. “They are a generations-old [Parisian] atelier… that bridges traditional techniques and new ideas that push the art of leather,” he says. After discovering “a treasure chest of techniques I could never have imagined,” he commissioned a pair of suede tables requiring dozens of layered cuts to achieve a specific pattern. “Their atelier is a perfect example of commitment to the art of craft that is becoming increasingly appreciated here in the US.”
Wherever design clusters, markets become mirrors of that locale’s identity. For Los Angeles–based designer Amy Lee McArdle, Paris’s antique markets are unmatched. “What draws me back each time is the range—you can uncover antique pieces alongside contemporary French artists,” she says. One maker she returns to is White Murdock at the Paul Bert Serpette Market. “His sculptural lighting feels both minimal and expressive,” she says. A pair of his white sconces now anchors her home’s entryway, pictured below.
Furniture designer Alison Zavracky of Studio Hinterland traces part of her practice to her graduate years in Copenhagen. “The Danish perspective on modern furniture has an emphasis on practicality, without sacrificing style,” she says. At Studio Hinterland, that influence blends with historical reinterpretation. “We’ve developed our own style… which we call referentially modern,” she says. Their Clovelea Collection is inspired by a Queen Anne–style Victorian mansion. It embodies this mixing of eras; the tiniest details bridging past and present.
Design shaped by landscapes
In Scandinavia, its the environmental conditions greatly impact the design scene. Norway, in particular is one of the European nations leading the way in sustainability and set the goal of fossil-free construction sites by the end of 2025. “Nordic design is shaped by how we live: close to nature… simplicity can be powerful and durability is a form of respect,” says Kristoffer Vestre, director of North America for the public-furniture maker Vestre.
The company’s newest launch, the June bench, comes from a 30-year collaboration among designers who met as students in Oslo. Vestre’s sustainability ethos has remained consistent since then: “Create furniture that brings people together, that endures for generations, and that gives more than it takes.” It has alway been tied to their close connection to the Scandanavian landscape.
One of one
Artist and designer Tina Frey of San Francisco-based TF Studio, left a recent trip to Cape Town with an unshakable sense of the region’s singularity. Places like the Zeitz Mocca Museum, which boasts the largest collection of contemporary south African art in the world, she says, ‘simply ‘do not exist anywhere else in the world.’
Southern Guild Gallery also left an indelible mark on her, especially given their role in connecting her to the bronze foundry now producing her newest collection, Orbit Collection in Bronze which will premier at Design Miami’s Contemporary 2.0 Exhibit this December 2 – 7. Of Southern Guild, Frey says she admires their unique curation style, connecting a range of media from the contemporary artists they represent.
Interiors, architecture and furniture are not flat experiences; they are tactile, sensory and emotional. To fully appreciate them you have to be there, in person. Whether in a centuries-old atelier or a contemporary foundry, in a Parisian market stall or a South African museum carved out of a silo, the forces that shape design are local. It is my prediction that while the last decade saw interior spaces curated to perfection, meant to be photographed for social media, the next, which we’re already seeing place emphasis on wellness, privacy and digital detox, sustainability and authenticity, will be the opposite.
Rooms will be built around objects discovered on the ground, contemporary pieces spawned from a variety of cultures, antiques with wear and tear and textiles whose colors make sense only when seen in the sun that shaped them — sourcing that can’t be done from a screen; instead it requires wandering, touching, listening and letting a place work its magic on you.
