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 Weeks 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, we 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 design 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.” Momeni’s approach to the global lan a map of global expertise: ancient techniques, modern manufacturing and the creative imprint of each region’s long-evolved practices.
Ukrainian architect and designer Victoria Yakusha offers a more metaphysical take. Known for what she calls living minimalism, she centers her work on cultural memory and storytelling. “Mythology and animism—objects filled with stories, energy, and memory,” she says. “This blend of living history… and living materials with minimalism is what I refer to as living minimalism.” Her upcoming presentation at Design Miami this December will build on this worldview, grounding her sculptural forms in land, heritage and minimalism.
Layers of legacy
Across the channel, British design continues to shape interiors far beyond its borders. “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” Cheltenham, founder of Cheltenham Interiors, whose family is deeply entrenched in the world of polo. “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’.”
Markets as cultural microcosms
Paris, of course, is another center 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 remain 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, the environmental conditions greatly impact the design scene. “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.
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 a 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 singularly unique curation style, connecting a range of media from the contemporary artists they represent.
Across continents and disciplines, one truth repeats: Interiors, architecture, and furniture are not flat experiences; they are tactile, sensory and emotional. 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.
