10 Collectible Design Shows to See in September
From a Danish hotshot’s 3D-printed furnishings that resemble frosty vertebrae to high-low earthenware vessels inspired by a picturesque Nashville estate
September always signals a return, whether to school or some semblance of structure after a languidly paced summer spent ignoring emails on the beach. That sense of reawakening runs especially strong across Europe, as London Design Festival, Paris Design Week, and Venice’s monthlong Homo Faber celebration of craft spill across their respective cities. There’s plenty to see farther afield, too, from The Future Perfect’s compelling group survey of ostensibly fragile glass creations to Maura Wright’s high-low earthenware hybrids inspired by the porcelain holdings and resplendent gardens of a historic Nashville estate. Below, scroll to discover the collectible design exhibitions on our itinerary this month.
“Under Wraps” at Charles Burnand Gallery | London
Charles Burnand Gallery is inaugurating its long-awaited permanent home in Mayfair with a theatrical meditation on revelation. Significant new works appear beneath semi-translucent architectural sheeting before automated mechanisms pull back their veils in a choreographed sequence, making anticipation part of the experience. Among the works awaiting discovery are Peter Lane’s monumental stoneware wall, Niamh Barry’s illuminated bronze sculpture, Studio Furthermore’s recycled aluminum console with dichroic coating, and Marc Fish’s chandelier clad in 22-karat rose-gold leaf.
September 12–January 9
“Use Me, I’m Fragile” at The Future Perfect | New York
Glass has always presented a seductive contradiction: it can appear impossibly delicate while proving remarkably resilient and durable, even when subjected to everyday use. This group exhibition plumbs that paradox through works by 20 designers who playfully test the material across a plethora of scales. Lindsey Adelman and Bocci both contribute atmospheric chandeliers while John Hogan turns familiar chair tropes into a pair of sculptural glass seats. Jonny Campolo offers a stained-glass fireplace screen, In Common With creates a monumental cast-glass portal, and Jillian Mayer fashions large sconces with emotive faces.
September 16—October 23
“Pelle: Metallic Reverie” Presented by Triode at Le 28 | Paris
Married couple Jean and Oliver Pelle turn inward with two fascinating new bodies of work that reveal the individual impulses behind their shared Brooklyn studio. Jean’s dazzling quartet of Fountains translates her affinity for the natural world into illuminated arboreal sculptures of hand-wrought wire and painted sheet-metal reliefs, with delicate branches carrying clouds and glimmering droplets. Oliver’s Hopper series, meanwhile, revisits the linework of his engineer father’s drawings through spare structures of handcrafted aluminum tubing. Presented alongside sketches and books that have long influenced the couple, the works trace two distinct creative trajectories within one of the design sphere’s most celebrated partnerships.
September 11—October 14
“Lasse Sylvest Lilleør: Extrude, Bridge, Fill” at Innenkreis | Copenhagen
Lasse Sylvest Lilleør pushes 3D printing toward the uncanny with four imposing new furnishings that resemble otherworldly, Giger-esque creatures. A colossal rocking chair rises in a frosty blue lattice of bone-like ligaments, its open structure recalling an exposed ribcage, while a black cocktail table balances on spindly limbs frozen mid-crawl and a menacing lounger stretches into an oversize spinal column. Achieved through iterative work in Rhino and Blender, each piece preserves visible traces of the hotshot Danish designer’s digital process and hand finishing.
August 27–October 17
“Hun Chung Lee: Home” at R & Company | New York
Drawing on three decades of hand-sculpting and layered glazing techniques, the South Korean ceramist has created his most ambitious presentation yet: a complete domestic environment rendered largely in stoneware. More than 30 works encompass a dining set, chairs, a bed, lighting, and his signature moon jars, their delicate celadon glazes reflecting subtle variations in color and texture. Conceived around ideas of departure and return, the rooms ascribe each piece a uniquely personal narrative, from a chess table that evokes adventurousness to a dining table associated with homecoming. Lee also fashioned a permanent celadon-tiled bathroom for R & Company’s newly consolidated gallery in Tribeca.
September 10—November 6
“Maura Wright: Verdant Veil” presented by AGO Projects at Cheekwood Estate & Gardens | Nashville
During a residency at Nashville’s historic Cheekwood Estate & Gardens, the Missouri-based ceramist mined the museum’s robust porcelain holdings and surrounding gardens to inspire a gloriously maximalist gaggle of unique vessels. Her exuberant earthenware commingles French Rococo porcelain and Italian majolica with the tactile irreverence of folk art, their surfaces crowded with florets, dripping glazes, ornate handles, and fragments of thrift-shore dishes. Ten never-before-seen ceramics appear atop furniture from the museum’s permanent collection against hand-painted wallpaper inspired by European frescoes, forging a theatrically Edenic setting in which tulips, leafy branches, classical figures, and ornate vessels seem to thrive naturally.
Until October 4
“Armand Louis: Dallo Sguardo al Segno” at Lo Studio—Nadja Romain with Galleria Rossana Orlandi | Venice
Atelier oï co-founder Armand Louis joins Murano’s master glassmakers to translate more than three decades of material inquiry into a luminous new menagerie of blown glass creations. Taking cues from nature without outrightly imitating the references, Louis studies phenomena such as sea-urchin spines, epiphytic plants, and centrifugal force, then allows molten glass to respond through heat and gravity,. The works range from Echinozoa, inspired by marine structures, to Innesto, whose branches reflect plant growth through coexistence. Patagonia pushes the inquiry into sound, using five blown-glass elements to reveal resonant frequencies and transform the material’s physical properties into music—all owing to the exceptional savoir-faire of Venetian artisans.
August 29—October 30
“Vincent Dubourg: Blue Weather” at Carpenters Workshop Gallery | London
In his most technically daring creations yet, the French artisan invokes Constructivism and Brutalism to recast bronze as a lava-like material, preserving traces of its molten origins beneath polished surfaces. His Organic Table captures that dynamic most vividly: pools of white bronze resemble placid lakes interrupted by viscous passages resting atop a labyrinthine Movingui wood base. Other works, such as an armchair and ottoman, translate Stonehenge’s post-and-lintel construction into bronze and upholstery. The works will accompany a showcase of 20 bowls by late Czech glassblower František Vízner.
September 17–December 19
“Tejo Remy: Solid Air, Liquid Color” at Galerie Kreo | Paris
Developed during a residency at Marseille’s Centre International de Recherche sur le Verre et les Arts Plastiques, the Dutch artist’s latest collection of glass vases emerge from a custom apparatus of adjustable metal rods and spheres that push into molten glass and pull away as each piece develops. The material resists and pools around these interventions, producing the “happy accidents” that Remy embraces and giving every casting a distinctive topography. Color heightens their otherworldly character—varying thicknesses make saturated hues appear to glow from within, while iridescent passages capture glass at its most fluid. Each one-of-a-kind vessel becomes what Remy evocatively describes as a “world inside a vase.”
September 18—October 10
“Anders Herwald Ruhwald: Sculptures for Plants and People” at Nina Johnson | Miami
Danish-American artist Anders Herwald Ruhwald infuses ceramics with a bodily presence in ten new hand-built sculptures that double as vessels, planters, and seats. Tall columns rise from broad bases into crown-like receptacles, while their rough, worked surfaces retain impressions of the maker’s hand while evoking geological accretions. Some even hold plants sourced from Miami’s surrounding landscape, which will require ongoing care. Others function as chairs, inviting visitors to sit among the works and observe their gradual evolution as time passes.
September 10—November 14