Studio Swine’s “Hair Highway.”

The Design Miami/Basel fair — the annual European companion to Design Miami in Basel, Switzerland — has a single objective: facilitating the sale of expensive design objects to wealthy collectors. Yet much like its neighbor, Art Basel, the show can also serve as a resource for enthusiasts and curious window shoppers, who come to see and enjoy the works on view, or survey what’s happening in design now (lots of experimentation with everyday materials, apparently). Without the placards or checklists one would normally find in a gallery or museum, though, it would have been entirely possible for non-experts to meander in and out of the fair’s 50-something booths this year without knowing for sure what’s old and what’s new, or which pieces represent real breakthroughs in materials and process. There were many more novel contemporary works on view than ever before, balancing out the usual glut of 20th-century icons, but it wasn’t necessarily obvious unless you scoured the $30 show catalog.

For example, I nearly walked right past what turned out to be my favorite thing in the entire show, which ended Sunday: a series of furnishings and accessories made from resin-encased human hair by the little-known London designers Studio Swine, who created it during a five-month residency with Pearl Lam Galleries in China. The gallery’s assistant happened to point out the project to me after I grilled her about another new piece by the young duo, a cabinet made from aluminum foam. Similarly, it took some persistence to learn that a group of intricate gold-wire necklaces at Caroline Van Hoek were by a 23-year-old newcomer (Hermien Cassiers), and that almost all the works in Gallery Fumi’s booth were previously unseen experiments by emerging talents — including Studio Markunpoika’s trio of vases made by gluing together blocks of pencils and turning them on a lathe. Listed here are 10 new projects by up-and-coming designers that, based on six or seven hours spent digging around Design Miami/Basel and pestering people, we figured were worth a closer look.

Oliver LangStudio Swine’s curio cabinets.

Studio Swine at Pearl Lam
Building on a process they used to make eyeglasses a few years back, the London newcomers’ “Hair Highway” pieces are made from resin embedded with dip-dyed human hair, sourced from the world’s largest hair marketplace in Shandong Province. The designers created the series during a five-month residency with the gallery in Shanghai. The young Royal College of Art graduates also created these elaborate curio cabinets during their stay, which debuted during the show as well — they’re made from industrial foamed aluminum meant to evoke Chinese scholar’s rocks.

Oliver LangJeremy Wintrebert at Gallery Fumi

Jeremy Wintrebert at Gallery Fumi
For its inaugural appearance at Design Miami/Basel, Gallery Fumi brought a selection of mostly new works by mostly young designers. I was advised to keep an eye on the Paris-based glass artist Jeremy Wintrebert, creator of these mouth-blown “Cloud” lamps, who will have both a solo show with Fumi and a commissioned installation at the Victoria and Albert museum during the London Design Festival.

Oliver LangStudy O Portable at Gallery Fumi

Study O Portable at Gallery Fumi 
Another favorite at Fumi was this table by this London duo, who normally make sculptural jewelry and housewares but had scaled their Fuzz process — which involves building up layers of ceramic resin around a geometric void — up to furniture size for the first time.

Oliver LangKueng Caputo at Salon 94

Salon 94
The New York art gallery was another newcomer to the fair; it cherry-picked a few dozen quasi-functional pieces from its roster of talents, including lights by Andy Coolquitt and a new marbled console and dining table by the hip Swiss design-art duo Kueng Caputo.

Oliver LangValentin Loellmann at Galerie Gosserez

Valentin Loellmann at Galerie Gosserez
Galerie Gosserez devoted its entire booth to the work of the 31-year-old German designer, who seems to be coming into his own as of late: his gawky, lumpy furnishings have taken a more elegant, less contrived turn, like the new Fall-Winter cabinet, which pairs an organic black frame with sleek, Scandinavian-style oak panels.

Oliver LangChristopher Schanck at Johnson Trading Gallery

Christopher Schanck at Johnson Trading Gallery
New York’s Johnson Trading Gallery focused on bringing the work of this Detroit talent, who hires local makers to produce his foam shelves and tables skinned in aluminum foil, to an international audience. Particularly novel was a piece that fused his foil process with an earlier experiment in chemically eroded wall mirrors.

Oliver LangAnton Alvarez at Design at Large

Anton Alvarez at Design at Large
For his graduate thesis in 2012, Alvarez invented a technique to bind chunks of wood together with resin-soaked thread by passing them through a kind of spinning hoop. For Design Miami/Basel’s new Design At Large showcase, curated by Dennis Freedman, Alvarez unveiled the first batch of pieces he’s been making with a supersized version of the machine that he created this spring.

Oliver LangTomás Alonso at Victor Hunt Gallery

Tomás Alonso at Victor Hunt Gallery
In the London designer’s latest series, tables and tabletop accessories made from various types of marble lock together comfortably thanks to simple grooves cut into their surfaces.

Oliver LangBrynjar Siguroarson

Brynjar Siguroarson
For a solo show at Galerie Kreo earlier this year, Siguroarson created wooden furniture embellished with a rope-knotting technique he learned from a shark hunter while traveling in the tiny Icelandic town of Vopnafjordur, along with local materials like leather, fur, and fishing lures.

Oliver LangBenjamin Graindorge at Ymer & Malta

Benjamin Graindorge at Ymer & Malta
The French gallery invited young designers to revisit marquetry for its presentation; Graindorge teamed up with the Parisian master craftsman Yves Josnan to create a table with a veneer comprising 2,000 pieces of 17 different types of wood.

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