June 2010

I was lucky enough to attend a lunch at Luminaire with design royalty recently. The event was in honor of Naoto Fukasawa, one of the world’s most important designers of everyday objects. Luminaire was kicking off an exhibit of Fukasawa’s work. Seated next to me was the delightful Nargis Kassamali, who, with her husband, Nasir, founded Luminaire in 1974 in Miami in a 500-square-foot space. It grew to 4,500-square-feet within two years, and the couple has since opened other showrooms in Florida and Chicago. Fukasawa, who has worked with companies such as B&B Italia, Magis, Artemide, Boffi, and Vitra, and who has won scores of design awards, led a tour of the exhibit, which is on the third floor of Luminaire until the end of July. His elegant designs (my favorite is the elegant humidifier shown here) are based on his careful examination of how people use items. "Good design means not leaving traces of the designer and not overworking the design," he has said. The exhibit contains items representative of Fukasawa's work from the beginning of his studio in 2003. Luminaire sells many of his designs, including all of his work for Boffi, B&B Italia, Magis, Artek and more. Fukasawa's items for Boffi (the tub and basins pictured here) remain popular with Luminaire clients, as does his furniture for B&B Italia. If you haven’t been to Luminaire lately, here’s a good reason to stop by.

—JAN PARR

We saw a lot of cool stuff at Morlen Sinoway’s annual indie design fest, The Guerilla Truck show, and we’ll be blogging about them in the coming weeks and featuring them in our magazine. These globe lamps by Erica Milde caught my eye. She sells them on Etsy for $38, along with other handmade goods, such as this maple end table/storage box ($98). The table was made by Milde’s friend and fellow Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design grad Karl Williamson.

—JAN PARR