9 Collectible Design Shows to See in October

October marks a season in flux, making transformation an apt thread through this month’s standout collectible design exhibitions. Designers around the world are revisiting places and materials that have long informed their practice, then pushing them in unexpected directions. Fernando Mastrangelo is debuting his first body of work in nearly a decade, Ian Collings is returning to wood after years experimenting with stone, and Sarah Sherman Samuel is inaugurating her Michigan gallery with works by designers connected to the Midwest. Scroll below for more of this month’s must-see exhibitions.

1. “Fernando Mastrangelo: Territories” at Cristina Grajales Gallery | New York

Landscape has long furnished Fernando Mastrangelo with potent source material, but his latest collection gives geography a geopolitical charge. For “Territories,” his first major solo show in a decade and debut with Cristina Grajales Gallery, the Hudson-based artisan looks to disputed regions around the globe, translating mountainous terrain into one-off functional sculptures. Cast from sand and crushed glass, with rare-earth oxides supplying earthy pigments, the pieces evoke contested landscapes without reproducing them literally. Bloodland, a dining table inspired by Crimea and the Donbas, sends low black mountains across bands of crimson and dusty rose, while other pieces draw from Kashmir and the Golan Heights. The exhibition marks a provocative return for Mastrangelo, whose painstaking casting technique transforms granular materials into painterly topographies charged with questions of land and ownership. 

Until February

2. “Ian Collings: Dark Forest, Silver Moon” at The Future Perfect | Los Angeles

Though Ian Collings is renowned for his stone sculptures, he spent 12 years as a carpenter and explored wood’s behavior extensively as co-founder of furniture purveyor Fort Standard before departing the company in 2018 to pursue his sculptural practice. Now, his sixth solo exhibition with The Future Perfect marks a return to timber after years spent exploring the geological character of stone. Here, he looks to moonlight and the nocturnal transformations that make familiar objects become harder to decipher. Carved root burls and tree cavities, for example, bear traces of compression and growth, while cast tin scatters light against lustrous wood grain. 

Until January

3. “Lukas Wegwerth & Corinna Dehn: Companions” at Gallery Fumi | London

For centuries, wooden shingles have clad buildings across central Germany’s Vogelsberg region, where Lukas Wegwerth and Corinna Dehn maintain a second studio. The humble building unit now drives “Companions,” a considered evolution of the duo’s ongoing Armadillo series that draws parallels between architectural cladding and the protective scales of fish and armadillos. Six new pieces, including two cabinets, a sideboard, a birdhouse, a dining table, and a freestanding screen, explore heightened contrasts of color and pattern. They employ natural pigments, from traditional Vogelsberg oil paints to an ebonizing process that turns wood shades of deep brown and black. Dehn cuts, sands, and pigments each shingle, while Wegwerth constructs the underlying framework and interior woodwork. They apply the shingles together, building tactile, scale-like skins whose colorful contrasts surprise and delight. 

Until November 28

4. “Rafael Prieto: The Future of the Past” at Emma Scully Gallery | New York

For a year, Rafael Prieto watched 16 decorative stone fragments from an early-20th-century Tribeca facade sit on scaffolding outside his home and studio. Slated for disposal during the building’s renovation, the pieces fascinated Prieto enough that he arranged to salvage them, then lived with them in his studio for another year and a half. They became the catalyst for his second solo show with Emma Scully Gallery. Prieto translated their architectural details into furniture that ranges from sculptural objects to tables and seating. Four pieces incorporate the original stone, while others take cues but use new materials such as lacquered wood in deep red and dark purple, creating glossy expanses that contrast the stone’s innate coarseness. 

Until December 12

5. “Homecoming” at Gallery SSS | Grand Rapids, MI

After spending 15 years in Los Angeles, Sarah Sherman Samuel returned to her native Michigan with a newfound appreciation for the galleries and studios that had enriched her daily creative life. That homecoming helped inspire Gallery SSS, which recently opened in a restored late-19th-century building in Grand Rapids with a group exhibition devoted to artists whose stories likewise began in Michigan or the greater Midwest. The eclectic roster traces the region’s considerable legacy of furniture making and craftsmanship through works spanning fine art and collectible furniture. Detroit-born artisan Chris Schanck, a Cranbrook Academy of Art alumnus, contributes a curvaceous blue velvet chair cradled by a craggy lattice of aluminum and steel. Kalamazoo-based artist Steven Haulenbeek takes another approach with a sprawling resin-bonded sand sculpture whose mint-green architectural reliefs project from the wall like an imaginary cityscape. Together, the works recast the Midwest as fertile creative territory while reconnecting artists with a region that helped launch their careers. 

Until October 16

6. “Danny Cremers: Spoiled” at Daguet-Bresson | Paris

Danny Cremers likes to spoil perfectly good vases. The Amsterdam artist starts with porcelain and the familiar silhouettes of classical vessels, then piles on color, cuts and reassembles their wafer-thin walls, and lavishes them with brass until they reach exuberant excess. Working by hand without a fixed outcome in mind, Cremers slab-builds each piece before stacking and slicing its components, leaving evidence of cracks and adjustments visible. “Spoiled” pushes this approach further with the artist’s first use of brass, which appears as gleaming handles and feet affixed with conspicuous drops of acrylic paint. These deliberately makeshift embellishments at once recall and upend the gilt-bronze mounts of historic ormolu porcelain. 

Until October 24

7. “Casey Johnson: Primary Forms” at Dernier Cri | New York

Casey Johnson may be known for his sculptural furniture, but sculpture came first. Trained in art, he initially approached functional objects as another avenue for exploring volume and material, once describing his furniture simply as “sculpture that had a function.” This show reverses that trajectory as Johnson casts function aside and follows his intuition. Wood remains central, from pine and figured maple to reclaimed oak and walnut, joined by natural stone and steel tubing. Throughout, found and carved objects nest within monolithic pieces like miniature shrines; water-worn goddess stones reappear at an enlarged scale in figured maple wall works. Free from furniture’s practical demands, Johnson has become reacquainted with the impulse that first drew him to making: creating without a client or prescribed destination. As he puts it, “I’ve found that I make sculpture for me, and I make furniture for others. There’s joy in both.” 

Until October 30

8. “Basia Pruszynska: Polecie” at Objekt Gallery | Warsaw

Basia Pruszynska’s experiments with light began in a field near her childhood home outside Wroclaw, gathering corn husks that she fashioned into luminous objects. Today, the Design Academy Eindhoven graduate turns to Polish folklore for “Polecie,” her first solo show, which presents one-of-a-kind furnishings and luminaires made from razor-thin wood veneer. Light glows through the timber from within, casting patterns across the lampshades and lending the material an ethereal presence. The exhibition takes its name from an Old Polish term for the fleeting period between summer and fall; a centuries-old wooden church at Debno Podhalanskie supplies another link to her heritage. Pruszynska draws from its shingles and floral ornaments to translate elements of vernacular architecture into a language entirely her own. 

Until November 20

9. “Like a Rumor: Sculptural Vessels and Lighting by Joël Brodovsky-Adams” at Superhouse | New York

“Like a Rumor” borrows its title from José Esteban Muñoz’s book Cruising Utopia, which considers how queer experience can register through fleeting signs such as a gesture, pose, or glance. Joël Brodovsky-Adams translates that ephemeral language into exuberant ceramics that bilge, bend, and strut with theatrical bravado. Starting at the potter’s wheel, the Brooklyn artist builds each piece from thrown components that he alters and assembles, allowing vessels to drift toward sculpture and lighting to transcend straightforward utility. Brodovsky-Adams dresses the glazed surface in patterns inspired by fashion and decorative histories, including one from a favorite Eckhaus Latta shirt. Each work emerges as a flamboyant character caught mid-performance—crystallizing gestures that may otherwise disappear by morning.

Until October 17