The Standouts From Jonalddudd’s Independent Design Exhibit

In his essay “” wrote, “If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous. The art of a chair is not its resemblance to art, but is partly its reasonableness, usefulness, and scale as a chair.” What he would make of , New York Design Week’s longest-running independent exhibition, is a wide-open question considering the consistently surprising, sometimes outlandish furniture on display. This year, the sixth edition took place in a vacated luxury sex store in Soho, where co-founder Chris Held of Nice Condo, a bespoke-furniture design studio, and guest curator Charles Constantine of Bestcase, a New York–based design manufacturer, presented 30 works against a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling mahogany cabinetry and shelving. As in previous iterations, each of the works was selected via an open call, and the only thing they have in common is that they have nothing in common. “We aspire to be objective,” says Held, and for him this also means selecting pieces that are not “market-focused.” The works, made predominantly by student and emerging designers, ooze, tilt, and stutter in unexpected ways. Here, some of the standouts.

Partners in business and life, Chelsie and Jacob Starley are , a creative studio conceived in Utah and launched one year ago when they moved to New York. The newly established studio quickly captured people’s attention with its playful and sculptural lighting of wood and steel. I nearly missed the Ruth lamp, its small scale somewhat hidden by the flashier work around it. But looking closer, it’s easy to appreciate the contrasts: A fringe of brown cord skirts along sharp steel edges; the decorative pageantry of beaded fringe and exposed stitching meets a utilitarian steel base and curved shade. Ruth is a tabletop homage to the first rodeo queen in Jacob’s hometown: his great-aunt Ruth, who is now retired at 100. With a team led by Chelsie and Jacob, each of their works is hand-manufactured in Brooklyn. This is their second year exhibiting at New York Design Week.

Presently in their fourth year of study in furniture design at Rhode Island School of Design, previously exhibited at ICFF + WantedDesign and has interned with ceramicist and artist . The work they show here is similarly tactile. Perched on a wooden platform, Huseynli’s fiberglass Bird Chair is a chair you want to interact with (or recoil from), shiny, bumpy, wax-colored, practically alive. The Azerbaijani Canadian artist creates built objects that reflect on their heritage; their previous work — which includes foam brick houses lit from within and an old television made of cast glass — resembles archaeological artifacts.

’s is intended to be ridiculous, the furniture designer tells me. A maple-wood core is sliced into four segments, red-edged on all sides like an apple peel. As a supersize fruit replica, Apple offers a simple pleasure. Fitted together with inlays, the apple can easily slide apart. With one month left studying at Rhode Island, Appelbaum intends to continue his explorations in wood. His work has been shown across Connecticut and Rhode Island.

To truly absorb ’s intricate sculptural assemblage, you must stop and bend down to examine its small-scale details. Is it a bomb? A totem? A toy microchip? The is a clear artifact of Beeston’s practice, which is inextricable from his hobbies: repairing broken electronics, collecting sheet metal, and reading sci-fi. With his work, he intends to “transcend and elevate even the most mundane of items,” 99-cent-store Tupperware and iPod Classics among them. Beeston is represented by , and his work has been shown with Fisher Parrish Gallery, Colette, and the Hole.

weaves some order into the room with her textile wallwork, which upcycles climbing rope in stripes of soft pinks and greens that ends in a scalloped border. Bourdet’s practice is focused on textiles, and she handweaves her one-off pieces from upcycled materials. Her work La Cordée 1652 was produced with support from the Stichting Ikea Foundation and was a finalist at the 2023 Swiss Design Awards. Bourdet has exhibited in solo and group shows across Europe, Berlin, Stockholm, and Basel, among others.

The steel frame of ’s dining chair looks unassuming and straightforward from the side, but head-on its material and color palette offer a surprising twist. The chair, draped in blue-and-orange cotton, calls on traditional Chinese techniques of indigo-dyeing but is given a contemporary form with a structure of lined steel rods. It was while visiting her father’s hometown, Henan, that Wang discovered the processes of indigo and natural dyeing and a family history of running an indigo-dye business. Wang’s designs have been commissioned for clients such as Swarovski and presented at Salone del Mobile in Milan and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

The Side Piece, which looks like a decorative wall tassel, is just here to have fun. It serves no function, and it knows it. Kate Ferguson, who is behind the design-art project , will tell you as much. Side Piece marries the aesthetically pleasing features of interior-design trends — e.g., pops of color, familiar patterns, and high shine — with the unnerving: a horse tail’s worth of blonde hair, chunky resin, leather, and silver chain links. Side Piece is a long-haired trophy of the exhibit’s ethos: to platform outlandish and creative works untethered to function or commercial gain.

All the works listed are available for sale on .