Elegant Ashtrays, Updated USM Chairs, and New Piercings at the "Shelter" Design Fair

Business Mayor

24-05-2025

A refreshing new design fair opened in New York City last weekend during the NYCxDesign festival and alongside the long-running International Contemporary Furniture Fair. Titled Shelter, it's a return to a physical show for the organizers who ran the home accessories expo Shoppe Object before starting online retailer Afternoon Light. Among its 89 exhibitors, the fair featured emerging brands working at scales and budgets from collectible furniture to cash-and-carry tabletop objects. It also included a few stalwart brands doing something surprising and a section from the producers of Jonald Dudd, an annual presentation of irreverent and pleasingly weird furniture and lighting.
I went to check it out with photographer Rebecca Smeyne and to select a few favorite objects in the show. Here are a few things we liked.
My vote for best in show was Likeminded Objects, the studio run by Elise McMahon in Hudson, New York. I'm a fan of her fabric patchworks, wire armatures, and other bright collages of rough-and-ready materials.
A pair of stoneware sconces by Ember Studio anchored one wall at Colony, the New York gallery/co-op run by Jean Lin.
Alara Alkan Studio at Colony
Fort Standard did what they do best and showed off some creative new cabinet pulls in various finishes.
Clothing brand Noah continued its forays into furniture and home decor with a set of quilts by Leslie Opp-Beckman.
Leslie Opp-Beckman at Noah
Her textiles are woven from Noah's dead stock fabrics.
USM's modular system at Shelter
A recently founded San Francisco company called Murmmr debuted a collection of heavy glass ashtrays. Extinguish whatever you've been burning—we opted for palo santo at the fair—and mesmerizing snakes of smoke circulate under the glass bells.
The dichroic glass version was by far my favorite.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jonald Dudd. This year, the exhibition of irreverent objets featured pleasingly awkward assemblages of odd materials that, in one way or another, add up to furniture. It was a parade of odd objects led by a hot dog stand, and for some reason, merch included tie-dyed 'Grateful Dudd' T-shirts.
(That blue tarp inflates and deflates as if breathing, BTW. It's a very Laura Palmer chaise?)
Teddy Breedlove at Jonald Dudd
My top work among the outré ensemble was 'The Quilted Lamp' by New York designer Teddy Breedlove.
Availableitems at Shelter
I stopped to snap a photo of the finials that top this amazingly odd postmodern bookshelf from Hudson Valley shop Availableitems.
New York studio Bond Hardware is known for its tastefully gothy jewelry and accessories, but at Shelter they also showed home-scale objects, including a lounge chair and a mirror, as well as porcelain lighting designs by Natalia Landowska and stone and resin work by Marcus Vinicius De Paula.