"Janet" by Katie Stout in Verdant Malformations at Venus Over Manhattan.
AD has long championed the work of independent makers, whose cutting-edge creations offer new windows into the world of craft. These 16 women, previously profiled in our pages and online, are making a name for themselves in their chosen mediums, whether they construct handwoven rugs, anthropomorphic lamps, or bewitching light fixtures. Sourced by some of the biggest interior designers in the business, these makers are likely already on your radar. If not, it’s time to get caught up. Here are their stories.
Katie Stout
“It’s not about being sexy,” New York–based designer Katie Stout told AD in 2017, ahead of her first solo show at New York gallery R & Company, “The girls are just having fun.” For the show, she devised a sort of squad—a series of cartoonish lamps and mirrors, the naked female forms of which Stout sculpts in clay and paints candy colors.
One girl did a headstand; another sat on a friend’s shoulders. Wires went in and out of bodies; nipples at times doubled as touch sensor switches. Stout, in the years before and since, has taken the art and design worlds by storm creating furnishings that seem to laugh in the face of convention, all the while letting you in on the joke. This off-kilter sense of beauty has quickly won over daring aesthetes such as fashion iconoclast Jeremy Scott and AD100 designer Kelly Wearstler. katiestout.com
