Germany's design scene has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past six decades. While Germans in the 1960s didn't even know how to spell the word "design," according to Renate and Stephan Fischer von Poturyzn, founders of Classicon, the country's creative landscape has evolved dramatically. Today, German design should no longer be underestimated, with interior designers and architects establishing themselves internationally alongside emerging creative talents making waves with their contemporary craftsmanship.
These artists work across diverse mediums - textiles, precious stones, metals - drawing inspiration from altars, photography, and virtual worlds. Six standout talents are currently combining art and design in the most beautiful ways, each bringing their unique vision to the contemporary creative scene.
Studio Jumi in Berlin represents the renaissance of traditional weaving techniques applied to contemporary art. This textile art duo consists of Miriam Rose Gronwald and Julia Buntzel, who met while completing a four-year professional weaving training program at Werkhof Kukate in Wendland, one of the last remaining places in Germany where one can learn and be certified in loom craftsmanship. Both artists bring backgrounds in contemporary art - Buntzel studied sculpture while Gronwald was a member of various dance companies.
"We wanted to show what potential hand weaving has and what you can do with it. Many people don't even know that there's an art form called textile art," explain Gronwald and Buntzel. They create delicate sculptures from copper wire and linen, composing large, airy wall hangings from cotton and paper, silk, or wool. Planning plays a central role in their work, though spontaneous changes always occur during the process, especially when materials behave unexpectedly and suddenly take control. The duo recently moved to a larger studio in Wedding to create a space for exchange and pass on their craft through workshops. They are currently exhibiting at the Maj van der Linden design gallery in Berlin-Mitte.
Lea Colombo, based in Cape Town, takes an entirely different approach to sculptural objects. "I construct each table very intuitively," explains Colombo. Her work on new objects - ranging from simple cubes to totem-like seats - always begins with searching for the right stones. These carry melodious names like red jasper, amethyst, rose quartz, or tiger's eye. While quartz varieties are typically known as miniature gemstones for jewelry, Colombo works with massive stone blocks.
"I select stones with the most interesting shapes and let them guide me, considering which stone becomes the tabletop and which becomes the leg," says Colombo. Her mother is German and her father Italian, but she grew up and lives in Cape Town. She acquires massive stone blocks mined in South Africa and Namibia, working with local craftsmen who possess the expertise to shape them. "I work with the potential of natural form," says Colombo, who has always relied on her instincts. She taught herself photography at 18, moved to Paris, photographed backstage at fashion shows, and quickly became one of the most exciting voices in the creative industry. The 32-year-old recently published the cookbook and travel book "Campania." Color is the most important element in her work, evident in her collectibles whose fans include Chanel Creative Director Matthieu Blazy, who exhibited Colombo's objects during his time at Bottega Veneta.
Photographer Pilar Schacher, working from Vienna, captures fleeting moments where beauty reveals itself in its purest form. Her childhood memories in Nuremberg form the foundation of her artistic work. "I loved running barefoot across the forest floor and feeling the diversity of its textures under my feet," Schacher recalls. She still returns to her Vienna studio from nature walks with various finds, fascinated by nature's timelessness and arranging dried leaves and tree bark into hanging sculptures centered around elegantly curved glass objects.
Besides her environment, unexpected visual patterns inspire her - visual impressions whose unusual forms and colors she intuitively incorporates into her designs. "Photography helped me see compositions and deliberately set lines. But only the unapproachable material of glass with its elegance makes my mobiles truly come alive," says the artist. Light remains her most important stylistic device, reflecting in the glass and slowly making its way through space. The delicate structures have an almost hypnotic effect on viewers, pushing everyday life into the background as one loses themselves completely in the moment.
Hannah Kuhlmann of Studio Kuhlmann in Cologne introduces herself on her website as a welder and designer - in that specific order. She individually hand-forms her furniture and objects in her Cologne workshop, driven by belief in the transformative power of craftsmanship and genuine passion for metal. From this material, she has created her linear-minimalist steel tube lights "Farmimals" and the dreamy "Stars for Sale" for Berlin's pop-up gallery Forma, which looked as if a child had cut them from brass sheet with clumsy enthusiasm.
Far from serial and industrial production, Kuhlmann's works celebrate the very deformations that occur when modeling robust materials. Such small imperfections also characterize her 2024 "Lucid Dreams" collection, exhibited at Gallery St. Vincents in Antwerp. These organically shaped lights reference an important source of inspiration: nature. However, Kuhlmann always embeds nature within an artistic narrative. Her "Lucid Dreams" invite viewers to take an afternoon nap: industrial steel meets delicate fabric, clear edges meet soft ruffles, bows, and oversized flowers. This creates a slightly surreal intermediate world where the boundary between reality and illusion blurs.
Nazara Lázaro, working between Berlin and Barcelona, demonstrates how digital tools can create surprisingly organic results. While 3D rendering is hardly futuristic technology anymore, learning that Lázaro's furniture is first completed as digital objects on computer surprises many - perhaps because her furniture has such an organic, tangible quality. Lázaro studied interior design in Madrid and subsequently lived in Japan for several years, where she learned to love craftsmanship but noticed her hands were much more skilled with computers.
The Spanish artist, who commutes between Berlin and Barcelona, excels at rendering. During the pandemic, the US platform Sight Unseen noticed her work and collaborated with her on her first proper furniture collection. Like a sculpture, Lázaro builds up a body gradually - first existing in digital reality before getting a physical twin. She finds inspiration collaborating with contemporary colleagues like Charlotte Taylor and Oscar Piccolo, as well as past designers like César Manrique, ceramicist Valentine Schlegel, or Joan Miró, whose name her surrealistic coat rack bears. Coming from Tenerife and missing warm weather, Lázaro considers leaving Berlin soon to move entirely to Barcelona, Miró's sunny birthplace.
Isabelle Graeff rounds out this collection of talents with her spiritually-inspired Portal furniture. Instead of classical religions, Graeff believes in quantum physics - though overlaps certainly exist, as the artist and designer notes. "I believe in a universal consciousness that permeates everything - coincidence doesn't exist for me." Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this, her Portal furniture represents an amalgam of art, mathematics, and spirituality. The mirrored exterior of the star-shaped Cabinet I from her collection makes it almost invisible, merging with its surroundings and appearing nearly dematerialized, contrasting sharply with its interior featuring lacquered Valchromat in red, orange, yellow, or blue.
Anyone who can't help thinking of a altar table upon seeing this wouldn't be wrong. After all, the series draws inspiration from the concept of contemporary altars, and Studio Graeff carries the subtle addition "Objects for Modern Temples." "The idea is to create objects that help us connect with something that lies outside ourselves," says Graeff, who founded her design studio in 2024. She lives in Berlin but originally comes from Heidelberg and from painting, studying art and design at Central Saint Martins in London before finding photography. She remains fascinated by chemical processes of film development in darkrooms and regularly dedicates herself to ceramics as well. Isabelle Graeff moves between various media, finding the right approach for every spark, every inspiration, every ritual, and every value.
