New Digs for Design Miami
By
December 6, 2010
“We have better material than ever this year,” said Miami developer and Design Miami co-founder Craig Robins at the opening of the sixth edition of display of modern and contemporary furniture, lighting, jewelry, and other stylish design objects. The fair also debuted a bigger and better structure as its home, designed by the New York-based design team Moorhead & Moorhead, conveniently located next to Art Basel Miami Beach.
Robbins singled out a few favorites: “Great galleries that had left have come back—Kreo and Barry Friedman. Carpenters Workshop Gallery is here for the first time, amongst others. And even the galleries that have previously shown with us have really brought an extraordinary display of objects that I didn’t see last year.”
Some of the world’s leading design galleries, including Galerie Patrick Seguin and Galerie Kreo from Paris, Demisch Danant and R 20th Century from New York, and Carpenters Workshop Gallery from London are presenting work alongside emerging dealers Matter, Industry, and Venice Projects. High-profile design sponsors like Swarovski, Fendi, and Cappellini, commissioned designers to construct site-specific projects and tapped W Magazine editor-in-chief Stefano Tonchi to moderate a series of design talks, including one with Silvia Fendi, Ron Arad, and Pharrell Williams and another with Design Miami’s 2010 designer of the year, Konstantin Grcic.
Caroline Van Hoek brought jewelry by Lisa Walker, including one piece, an amazing cloth necklace, that is a collaboration with the all-girl collective Chicks on Speed; Gallery Seomi is showing a stunning mother of pearl and walnut table and stools by Kim Dongwon and Lee Hunchung’s ceramic lamps; Seguin has a full booth of vintage Jean Royere furnishings; Friedman flaunts a Ron Arad stainless steel rocker, alongside new wooden rockers by Wendell Castle; Todd Merrill offers several vintage patchwork steel works by Paul Evans; Carpenters Workshop Gallery presents a digital light-work that responds to sound by random; and Sebastian+Barquet brought vintage furniture by Donald Judd.
Said Sebastian+Barquet’s Nicholas Kilner, “We’ve wanted to bring Judd to a fair since we started representing the furniture, but obviously we needed light-frame pieces. We just recently found these three 1990 pieces. The orange stool is actually unique for his lifetime. It’s the only piece produced in that color while Judd was alive.”
