This year’s Design Miami was full of noise and spectacle, yet a handful of objects and spaces kept tugging at my attention long after I left the tent.
What follows is a very personal list of the pieces, rooms, and small details that stayed with me. Each piece made this year’s Design Miami feel less like a marketplace and more like a gallery of ambition.
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- Mathieu Lehanneur at Design Miami 2025 with his “Not A Bag” pillow. Photo by Chris Force.
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- Liquid Glass coffee table by Mathieu Lehanneur. Photo courtesy Mathieu Lehanneur
Liquid Glass Table by Mathieu Lehanneur
“My mission is to create some pieces that will last centuries,” Mathieu Lehanneur told me. “I want to be more free with my creations, I no longer work with galleries. So it’s only a question of inspiration.” With the help of his team of about 15 people he debuted several new pieces, but my favorite was the stunning Liquid Glass Table. The way the light came through the table was beautiful. It’s something I want to live with.
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- Food Stamp Ware: Delft Pottery, 2025 by Roberto Lugo. Photo courtesy of R & Company.
Food Stamp Ware by Roberto Lugo
Two loves of my life are ceramics and hip hop. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this modern delft ware-riff adorned with iconic rappers from artist Robert Lugo. His Food Stamp Ware takes the language of classic delftware and flips it, swapping pastoral scenes for hand painted portraits of iconic rappers and cultural figures. The result is this sharp, funny, and deeply respectful remix of history, putting the faces and stories that shaped modern music onto objects that once celebrated European aristocracy. It is familiar and subversive at the same time.
“CR Lounge Chair, ” 2024 by Marie & Alexandre for Galerie signé at Design Miami 2025. Photo courtesy of Galerie signé
CR Lounge Chair by Marie & Alexandre
The Paris based duo extends their ongoing research into metal “skeletons” draped with padded, body-like forms developed into low slung, surprisingly comfortable lounge chairs.
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- Artist David Franklin. Photo by Chris Force
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- David Franklin & Crosby Studios Installation for Kohler. Photo courtesy of Kohler
David Franklin & Crosby Studios Installation for Kohler
I love David Franklin’s work. His ceramic fish are everything the design world needs: craft, history, a bit of whimsy, and zero pretension. His work was, perhaps ironically, presented here by Crosby Studio, whose work embodies—well, what’s a good way of putting this—a counterpoint to David’s approach.
David is a two-time resident of the Arts/Industry residency program, an amazing partnership between Kohler Co. and The John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
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- Circlet Series Floor Light Sculpture by Markus Haase. Photo courtesy of Todd Merill Studio
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- New Bean Bag Chair by Jirah Joshua. Photo courtesy of Todd Merill Studio
Circlet Series Floor Light Sculpture by Markus Haase and New Bean Bag Chair by Jirah Joshua
At Todd Merrill Studio, Jirah Joshua debuted a new evolution of his Bean Bag Chair, now anchored by a patinated bronze frame and wrapped in warm nude leather that he hand-stitches himself. The piece pushes the casual bean bag into something sculptural and quietly powerful.
Alongside it, Markus Haase’s metamorphosed Circlet appears as a table or floor lamp, its looping form and meticulously worked surfaces showing a refined command of material and finish that turns technical innovation into something soft and luminous.
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- Pacific Dreams by Laurent Dufour. Photo by Yosuke Kojima courtesy of Aurelien Gendras
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- Stargazer by Jana Ruzickova. Photo courtesy of Lasvit
Pacific Dreams by Laurent Dufour and Stargazer by Jana Ruzickova
There were many places at Design Miami where design and fine art met. Laurent Dufour’s monumental green matte Bird, a Jun Kaneko meets Jaime Hayon mix, turns clay into a kind of animated architecture: a 1,150-pound, indoor-outdoor totem produced during a Long Beach residency.
Nearby Jana Růžičková’s Stargazer for Lasvit treats light as a material, layering texture in fine orbs of glass to create a plate of wonder.
aurelien-gendras.com
lasvit.com
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- Mindy Solomon at Design Miami 2025. Photo by Chris Force
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- Mindy Solomon Gallery’s booth at Design Miami 2025. Photo by Jeanne Canto coutesy of Mindy Solomon Gallery
“A New Dawn” by Mindy Solomon Gallery
“My life is an absurd menagerie of things,” gallerist and former art educator Mindy Solomon tells me at her exhibit A New Dawn: The Fundamentals of Making. She makes a point not to delineate between fine art and design, “I don’t create boundaries.”
The exhibit brought together glass, ceramic, metal, textile, basketry, and furniture into one colorful field. “I think that collectible design can be functional depending on the level of tolerance you have to use it. I think that things should be used.” Participants included Amber Cowan, Dee Clements, Donté Hayes, Frances Trombly, hettler.tüllmann, Jaiik Lee, Jane Yang-D’Haene, Jiha Moon, Kelsie Rudolph, Linda Lopez, Terri Friedman, Vadis Turner, and Yuki Ando.
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- The Deep Vase exhibited at Design Miami 2025 ontop of a new coffee table from Floris Wubben. Photo by Chris Force
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- Deep Vase by John Hogan
Deep Vase by John Hogan
Seattle based glass artist John Hogan’s Deep vase reads almost like a solid slice of water, its sharp silhouette revealing subtle internal contours as you move around it.
Adrian Sassoon at Design Miami 2025. Photo by Chris Force
Adrian Sassoon
Adrian Sassoon’s exhibited offered a thoughtful counterpoint to the fair’s larger galleries by presenting finely crafted contemporary ceramics, glass, metalwork, and silver that highlight material mastery and sculptural form. Works on view ranged from Kate Malone’s Mega Magma and luminous blown and cold-worked glass by Joon Yong Kim, delicate vases by Hitomi Hosono, and nuanced sculptural objects by Junko Mori, Felicity Aylieff, and Andrew Wicks. The selection also included pieces by Hiroshi Suzuki, Vezzini & Chen, Galia Amsel, Colin Reid, Yukito Nishinaka, Ashraf Hanna, and Tobias Møhl, offering a cross-section of international makers whose works bridge craft and collectible design.
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