Brooklyn furnishings studio Stillmade unveils its first collaborative design collection

For the previous ten years, the Brooklyn furnishings studio Stillmade has quietly constructed a enterprise across the wealthy custom of American design. For the reason that studio’s founding in 2013 by Paul Mignogna, who serves as the corporate’s artistic director, nearly all of its assortment has been designed in-house and produced from begin to end in Stillmade’s Brooklyn workshop. 

This month, Stillmade debuts its first collaborative collection, showcasing the designs of three fellow New Yorkers. Ceramicist Danny Kaplan, industrial designer Pat Kim, artist Michele Quan, along with Mignogna Studio, have produced a settee, a espresso desk, two aspect tables, a credenza and a storage hutch, which stand as dynamically collectively as a group, as they do aside.

‘This collection has at all times been a part of the plan since Stillmade launched. Our first Brooklyn store was a shared workspace with a couple of dozen different impartial designers and it was an extremely inspiring expertise to work alongside so many proficient individuals,’ says Mignogna. ‘Everybody was designing, producing, and advertising their very own work as a result of the panorama of manufacturing and promoting companions was fairly bleak. 

‘That was the preliminary impetus; for us to fill that gap out there and be a artistic and manufacturing companion for this discipline of homegrown impartial designers. It additionally permits us to be a extra attention-grabbing firm and diversify our model perspective. It’s actually enjoyable working with individuals whose work I love and am impressed by.’

Every of the inaugural version’s companions got here by means of numerous sources. ‘For the Kim assortment, Pat and I’ve been speaking about this collaboration for years,’ says Mignogna. ‘I’ve at all times cherished how totally different Pat’s work was from the tone of Stillmade designs. It represented a extra playful perspective. His work is curvaceous and asymmetrical, which is an ideal complement to Stillmade’s extra modernist tone.’

This geometric aesthetic oscillates to a extra suave one with Quan’s painted credenza and hutch. ‘We weren’t solely drawn to Michele’s ceramics but in addition her exploration of Jap symbols in her work. Utilizing ceramic {hardware} is a standard follow, however we needed to do it in a novel approach. The ceramic is the focus of the piece,’ says Mignogna. 

‘We most likely went by means of 4 or 5 iterations and needed to begin from scratch just a few instances. We actually needed the cupboard and the ceramic to dwell in the identical world so to talk. A mixture of folks, but elegant minimalism. The method was just a little painstaking, however we love the ultimate consequence.’

Ceramics additionally characteristic strongly within the designs by Kaplan, who was impressed by the art work of Roger Caplan to create ceramic inlay tables of his personal by setting his tiles on Stillmade’s stable wooden base. Mignogna recounts, ‘We had a tough thought for a espresso desk with an inlay prime and reached out to Danny to infuse his daring shapes and hues into the design. His work can be extraordinarily textural and natural, which once more, enhances Stillmade’s extra clear and minimalist aesthetic.’

To spherical out the assortment, Mignogna contributed the ‘Clifton’ couch – a smooth, minimal type with an uncovered wood body and deliberately uncovered joinery. He says, ‘The “Clifton“ assortment was clearly much less about selecting a designer and extra about me creating a definite design voice exterior of Stillmade. It was the final addition to the collection and was designed particularly to tie all the work collectively.’