This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits.
Wretched Flowers Opens an Experimental Space
For several years, Loney Abrams and Johnny Stanish, the husband-and-wife duo and founders of Wretched Flowers, have worked out of their home studio in New Fairfield, Conn., to create gemstone-beaded chain mail lighting and tapestries. Desiring a more experimental space for testing new ideas and getting feedback in real time, the pair will open a showroom in Manhattan on Wednesday.
“The creative process feels really special and intimate in a way that wasn’t possible with just an online presence and a studio so far from the action,” Abrams said.
The space will display new works alongside the couple’s core collection, which includes tramp art-inspired mirrors and sculptural domestic objects. Among recent pieces will be the studio’s largest chain mail tapestry to date, a diptych inspired by Raphael’s tapestries from the Vatican, currently part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” exhibition.
Wretched Flowers’s chain mail weave motif originated in the 3rd century B.C. and consists of four outer rings connected to one central ring, the outer rings making up the columns and rows. This grid is not unlike a crochet pattern, and the beading technique the couple developed contrasts “the sweet feminine charm of crochet and floral patterning with the brutality and heaviness of chain mail armor,” Stanish said.
The showroom, which is in SoHo, will also feature a wall of samples from the artistic hardware company Petra, including a new collection designed by Wretched Flowers.
The studio will host an open house on Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. at 481 Broadway, 4th floor. Thereafter, it will be open by appointment; www.wretchedflowers.com. — STEPHEN TREFFINGER
After Nearly Four Decades, ICFF Is Moving to the Fall
Each May, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, known as ICFF, fills acres at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center with inspired prototypes and stylish production pieces. After this spring’s run from May 17 to 19, it will move next year to November.
“May is very challenging for the audience and for the exhibitors,” said Claire Pijoulat, a brand director at ICFF, which has averaged about 450 exhibitors and 13,000 visitors over the past few years. The change, she said, will align the fair “more thoughtfully with the international design calendar,” which is crowded with furniture trade shows in the spring and early summer.
Odile Hainaut, the fair’s other brand director, explained that the new time slot resulted from “about three years” of consideration and had drawn “enthusiastic” reactions from industry players.
Starting in November 2027, ICFF will run at the Javits Center concurrently with Boutique Design New York, a trade fair and conference for boutique hotels and restaurants that was founded in 2010. With the simultaneous events expected to increase and broaden attendance and awareness, Pijoulat said, ICFF will be able to “build a stronger foothold across the industry.”
Since 2013, ICFF has been a centerpiece of the nonprofit NYCxDesign Festival every May. Hainaut and Pijoulat said ICFF would continue sponsoring spring activities with NYCxDesign, including showroom events known as ICFF Night Out.
NYCxDesign, for its part, is now planning November programs. Ilene Shaw, NYCxDesign’s executive director and a former leader of ICFF, said that her team had long pondered expanding into fall events. ICFF’s 2027 move, she said, “gives us a flame under us to get those going.” icff.com. — EVE M. KAHN
These Dishes Are Meant to Be Used — and Repaired
When Simone Bodmer-Turner, who is known for her delicate ceramic vessels and sculptural cast-bronze objects, moved from New York City to a farm in the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts, she entered a more physical era of her life. “I’m planting vegetables, I’m going to the studio every day, I’m painting the barn,” Bodmer-Turner said. The rural environment also influenced her studio practice. For the last year, she has been developing what she described as “simple, humble objects of the everyday,” culminating in a tableware collection. It is the first project from her newly established SB-T Studio.
Inspired by English ironstone pottery and Japanese glazing techniques, the 12-piece collection includes plates, servingware, bowls, cups, mugs and candlesticks ranging in price from $75 to $575. The objects are made from molded and shaped red clay that is coated in a milky white slip and finished in a clear, durable glaze. Each piece has a unique, painterly surface. “It felt very important to have the marks of a handmade process,” Bodmer-Turner said. Also important: The tableware is meant to be used. Should an object break, buyers can send it to SB-T Studio’s repair program, a collaboration with the kintsugi artist Yuko Gunji.
The collection will be shown from May 15 to May 20 at SB-T Shop, a New York City Design Week pop-up at 109 Thompson Street in SoHo. It will be accompanied by 18th- and 19th-century English and American antiques sourced by the dealer Christopher Cawley, which are all for sale, too. “With the importance we’ve placed on tactility, the weight of the pieces and how everything feels in your hands, we’re looking forward to sharing them in person,” Bodmer-Turner said. simonebodmerturner.com. — DIANA BUDDS
A Sinuous 1970s Armchair Makes a Comeback
Armchairs commissioned in the 1970s for the fashion designer Halston’s headquarters, at Olympic Tower in midtown Manhattan, are returning to the market in reproductions known as SOM79. Named after the Halston office’s architects, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the s-shape chairs are cantilevered on sinuous steel tubes.
Manufactured by Teknion’s new IKONstudio brand, the chairs (starting at $1,350) will debut on May 17 at the Afternoon Light Design Fair in Lower Manhattan, in an installation created in collaboration with the furniture dealer Rarify. The SOM79 variants, with chrome or dark red frames and leather or wool upholstery, will be displayed alongside photos of the Halston office, whose rooms were lined with mirrors and used for runway shows and lavish parties.
Charles Pfister, an SOM interior designer, originally furnished the Olympic Tower spaces, in an era when the architecture firm routinely supplied clients with custom pieces “down to the trash can, ashtray and planter,” said David Rosenwasser, Rarify’s co-chief executive. The bespoke designs, rarely produced in any numbers, have been largely forgotten.
Of the thousands of designs slumbering in SOM’s files, the Halston armchair made sense to reintroduce partly because of its eye-catchingly witty curves: The twin back supports look like bare shoulder blades. Julia Murphy, an SOM partner, said that anthropomorphic feature suited a fashion house, evoking a gown “breathtakingly low-scooped in the back.”
Afternoon Light runs from May 16 to 19 at WSA, 161 Water Street; afternoonlight.com. — EVE M. KAHN
MUJI’s Recycling Initiative Launches in the U.S.
Beginning on Thursday, an installation of 30 fabric fish banners, will be displayed at MUJI’s Fifth Avenue flagship store during the NYCxDesign Festival, as Japan’s famously brandless brand rolls out its recycling initiative in the United States.
Known as ReMUJI, the project involves collecting MUJI garments from customers and reviving them through traditional Japanese techniques. Some pieces are dyed deep blue at an indigo factory. Others are deconstructed and reassembled into tops, bottoms and totes at a sewing studio in Tokyo.
“MUJI customers worldwide are concerned about sustainability and waste,” said Reiko Sudo, the design director of Nuno Corporation, a textile company. Inspired by the brightly colored koinobori, or carp banners, that fly throughout Japan each May in celebration of Children’s Day, Sudo collaborated with Adrien Gardère, a French exhibition designer, on the swirling fish that announce and embody the initiative in Manhattan.
The stylized carp consist of a wood spine, aluminum ribs and a taut skin made from ReMUJI materials, such as patchworks of denim, Breton stripe jersey or cotton shirt panels, with rows of buttons and pockets oriented every which way.
Though the fish are not for sale, a small collection of ReMujiUJI apparel and accessories made locally will be available for purchase. 475 Fifth Avenue; muji.com. — NAOMI POLLOCK
Italian Craftsmanship Meets Neutral Colors
The rustic tableware at Il Buco, a popular restaurant in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood, is not just a delivery system for comfort food, but also a symbol of the unpretentious pleasures of Italian cuisine. Since 2013, tabletop items overseen by the restaurant’s founder, Donna Lennard, in collaboration with the brothers Antonello and Lorenzo Radi, have been sold to the public through the homeware brand Il Buco Vita. Now, timed with NYCxDesign, a few of the classic collections, many named for towns and villages in Italy, where they are made, are being reintroduced in the vanilla, chestnut and licorice tones favored by the interior designer and media star Leanne Ford.
“I’ve always loved the way Il Buco makes a table feel collected, not decorated,” Ford said in a news release. “Effortless, a little imperfect and full of soul.”
Ford, who has collaborated with Crate & Barrel and Target, applied her neutral color sense to Il Buco Vita’s Montegranaro splatterware (black), Bevagna dishes (white with threads of gray along the rims) and terra cotta Bellocchi casserole dishes with ribbonlike handles (cream or black). She also supplied new hues for the company’s Collepino wax candles (deep brown) and Pienza glassware (clear or smoky).
All Il Buco Vita x Leanne Ford pieces are available May 15 and can be purchased online. Prices range from $26 for a Montegranaro espresso cup to $330 for a deep Bevagna serving platter. The Bellocchi casserole shown here is $250. ilbucovita.com. — JULIE LASKY
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