Seven highlights from New York's WantedDesign festival
Wooden stools by Mexican design students and rock-like cabinets produced in rural Quebec are among the top creations at this year's WantedDesign show, as selected by Dezeen's US reporter Bridget Cogley.
Founded by Odile Hainaut and Claire Pijoulat, WantedDesign is an annual festival in New York City that runs concurrently with NYCxDesign. The event is held at two separate locations in the city: Brooklyn's Industry City from 16-20 May and Chelsea's Terminal Stores in Manhattan from 18-21 May.
Both warehouse-like venues feature an array of pieces from established designers, well-known brands and burgeoning makers. This year's show gave attention to student work and female designers, alongside country-curated stalls with stand-out designs from Canada and Egypt.
Read on for our seven top picks:
Stools by Monterrey Institute of Technology
Undergraduate students at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico showcased a series of wooden stools at WantedDesign's Brooklyn location. The designs are all the same scale but feature different shapes, details and joinery.
Ledge Console by Simon Johns
Canadian designer Simon Johns draws influence from the cascading cliffs near his secluded home and studio in southern Quebec for his work. Among his creations is this black, ash wood console that has hand-carved doors etched like rockface, with various grooves and demarcations.
"The carving is constrained to parts delimitated by saw cuts perpendicular to the wood's grain, allowing for an imprecise breaking of the wood," Johns told Dezeen. "The result is somewhat haphazard, as is the crumbling of the layers of stone."
sChaise by Smarin
A thin stretchy band wraps over a hollow metal frame to form the seat of this chair by French furniture brand Smarin. Founder Stéphanie Marin designed the chair as a continuation of the Le Schaise series, which launched at the Centre Pompidou's David Hockney retrospective in 2017.
Glassware by Elyse Graham
Various bubbles and grooves give texture to glass vessels by Elyse Graham, with pops of pastel colours alongside vibrant yellows. Graham typically works with resin, but chose to work with glass for her pieces at WantedDesign. A pink table by the Los Angeles-based designer is also featured at another NYCxDesign exhibit, Deeper Than Text, organised by the Female Design Council in Chelsea.
Esterilla chair by Tu Taller
Colombian studio Tu Taller presented a powder-coated red steel children's chair, inspired by traditional bentwood Vienna cafe chairs. The bent tubular Esterilla chair features a perforated seat that looks like cane, and was designed in collaboration with Colombian steel producer HJA.
Alabaster pieces by Luxmar
Vases made from a fine-grain, translucent rock called alabaster are on display at WantedDesign's Manhattan venue. Made by Egyptian studio Luxmar, the series is the result of efforts from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to promote startups, designers and other enterprises in the Egyptian city of Luxor. Six designers participated in the project and ended up forming the new brand, Luxmar.
Rubber pieces by Slash Objects
New York firm Slash Objects showcased these trays, placemats, coasters and trivets using recycled rubber, designed by studio founder Arielle Assouline-Lichten. All of the pieces have a terrazzo-like composition that is squishy to the touch, and framed with polished brass edging.
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