These Artisans Will Have You Rethinking the Art of the "Handmade Gift"
House Beautiful editors are lucky to see beautiful new home goods every day. For our 2023 Shopping Issue, we highlighted seven of the most exquisite new pieces of furniture, tableware, bedding, and decorative objects we've come across lately to collect and gift. Like the best home stores across the country, they bring something unique and personal to your decor. Whether they're made of wood, porcelain, or recycled textiles, these extraordinary, artisan-made treasures don't just fill the home—they feed the soul.
KNOCKDOWN CHAIR
Jeremy Kamiya, Kamiya Furniture, High Point, NC
"I wanted to do something that is hard to reproduce and would set me apart," says Jeremy Kamiya, founder of Kamiya Furniture. He takes what he calls "an honest approach" to woodworking: no nails, no screws, no stains. Finding inspiration in the 1,300-year-old five storied pagoda at the Horyuji temple in Japan, which withstands earthquakes in part because it's made with fitted joints in lieu of nails, Kamiya approaches his designs as if he were playing with Lego bricks—fitting the pieces together seamlessly. He creates simple silhouettes with precision-fit joinery techniques, polished brass wedges, or wood pins, noting, "Function will inform the design, but form has final say."
ALPAGE SMALL OVAL, MALLORCA OVAL, AND SOPHIA OVAL TRAYS
Stephanie Dawn Matthias, Los Angeles, CA
After studying ceramics in college, Stephanie Dawn Matthias worked as a private chef and a doula. But she reexamined her life during the pandemic and went back to the studio in 2022. "I wanted to return to creativity," she says. Today, her durable, high-fire, small-batch porcelain pieces embody vintage vignettes of the European countryside, which she recalls from time spent in the South of France and Tuscany, and childhood summers in the Austrian Alps. Each finished piece, she says, "is a blend of the past and now."
Shop Stephanie Dawn Matthias Ceramics
JANUS LAMP AND RHODES LAMP
Danny Kaplan, Danny Kaplan Studio, Brooklyn, NY
"It became this meditative thing for me," says Danny Kaplan, explaining what it felt like to learn wheelthrowing at his local pottery studio. "I would lose myself for hours." Trained as a painter at the New School Parsons School of Design, Kaplan started his own ceramics studio in 2017, crafting furniture, vessels, and lighting. His hand-built and wheel-thrown sculptural pieces—often assembled on top of each other—embody a modernist aesthetic borne out of ancient shapes. "It's all about pushing the material and reinterpreting classical forms," Kaplan says. "They begin with symmetry, but often evolve to have more looseness in the final result."
POPSICLE AND COLUMN BRUSHES, WALNUT SPOONS, WHISK BROOM, PINSTRIPE SPOONS
Aspen Golann, Berwick, ME
"I enjoy watching my new life degrade these clothes," says Aspen Golann, carving wood wearing a ragged pencil skirt and blouse that met the dress code of her old job as a private school teacher. She stumbled onto a new career by following some people carrying wood into what turned out to be a school for trades, including furniture making. Golann enrolled six months later. Today, she crafts functional objects with the look of modern sculpture entirely by hand. No electricity. No noise. "The silence is a bit of why I do this," she says. "There aren't a lot of jobs that allow you to spend that kind of time in your own head."
RUE DE L'EGLISE QUILT
Marilyn Armand, Le Point Visible, Bedford, Quebec
Seven years ago, when Marilyn Armand moved to Quebec, she learned heritage quilting from a local women's group. This led her to realize that, as she says, "I want to make quilting alive again, to explore it as a piece of art." She launched Le Point Visible, repurposing textiles to create modern, vibrant quilts—which can take 50 hours each to complete—in patterns inspired by nature and architecture. "I don't waste anything; smaller scraps can be used as table runners or cushions," says Armand, who works with upcycled 15-to-120-foot rolls of new fabric that companies usually toss. "I love what I do. It's been five years and there hasn't been a day that I didn't want to quilt."
NOCON BOWLS AND NOCON MIRROR UNTITLED NO. 16
Jennifer Nocon, Los Angeles, CA
"I take inspiration from recurring patterns in nature, the way things like spirals, feathers, vines, leaves, and water crystals organize themselves in order to grow," says ceramist Jennifer Nocon. Whether she's creating the serpentine detail of a lamp base or the hypnotizing swirls of a bowl, for Nocon, the process is everything. "It starts when the form of the ceramic piece is finished but not yet dry," she says. "Then I apply an underglaze and draw through it with a carving tool to reveal the color of the clay body underneath. I never know how a piece will look until it's finished."
HOSFELT TABLE
Luis Peña, PeñaMade, San Francisco, CA
Furniture maker Luis Peña was introduced to woodworking watching his dad tinker in the garage. "He built a bookcase for me, and it really stuck that you can make your own things," he recalls. "It gave me confidence." Fast-forward 30 years and Peña is now a dad himself. A bookshelf he made for his daughter is part of his collection of more than a dozen pieces distinguished by their intricate yet playful geometry. "Woodworking is an accumulation of my entire creative history—from graphic design to commercial film director," Peña says. "It tells a story, it evokes emotion."
These extraordinary, artist-made treasures don’t just fill the home—they feed the soul.
You Might Also Like
