Design in the Hamptons

R& Company at Jeff Lincoln Art + Design, 2022
COURTESY: R& Company & Jeff Lincoln Art + Design / PHOTOGRAPH: Joe Kramm

Thanks to the post-pandemic exodus from US cities over the last two years, galleries have been opening up across hubs now dense with wealthy populations. Upstate New York, Aspen and the Hamptons are increasingly becoming year-round destinations and have a growing number of white cubes dotted among the up-market boutiques and restaurants. A few interior designers such as Jeff Lincoln and Elena Frampton saw the potential and claimed their spots in the Hamptons a few years back, while Manhattan’s Di Donna made the design move with their outpost, Sélavy, in 2020. As the trend gathers pace, this summer has seen design galleries appear throughout eastern Long Island. We take a closer look at four of them. 

Make Hauser & Wirth, Southampton NY

Exterior view, Make Hauser & Wirth, Southampton
COURTESY: Make Hauser & Wirth / PHOTOGRAPH: Thomas Barratt

International art powerhouse Hauser & Wirth’s decision to bring an outpost of their design gallery, ‘Make’, to Southampton, NY, is a strong signal of the area’s new status as a design destination. The Swiss-born blue chip with 16 locations across the globe has  assigned Make’s original British curator Jacqueline Moore to lead the American venture.

Jacqueline Moore at Make Hauser & Wirth, Southampton, 2022
COURTESY: Make Hauser & Wirth / PHOTOGRAPH: Thomas Barratt

Her philosophy remains the same on this side of the pond: “Clay, textile, metal or wood… it’s all about the handmade and engaging with the process through the material,” she says. “We can show a woven basket next to a functional ceramic where we also have a conceptual sculpture.”

Exhibition view, ‘Of Making and Material’, 2022, Make Hauser & Wirth, Southampton
COURTESY: Make Hauser & Wirth, Southampton

The inaugural exhibition, ‘Of Making and Material’, is an eight-person show featuring UK designers such as Adam Buick, Harry Morgan, David Gates, Rosa Nguyen, Mark Reddy and Florian Gadsby, each of whom explores, in different ways, the intimacy between hands and material. 

Exhibition view, ‘Of Making and Material’, 2022, Make Hauser & Wirth, Southampton
COURTESY: Make Hauser & Wirth, Southampton

The show includes a two-week residency by Gadsby in early August with live demonstrations at the pottery wheel. Later in the year, a group show with British and American ceramicists and glassmakers will introduce the likes of Derek Wilson, Sue Paraskeva and Jochen Holz to the islanders. “Education through engagement is critical,” explains Moore.  

Exhibition view, ‘Of Making and Material’, 2022, Make Hauser & Wirth, Southampton
COURTESY: Make Hauser & Wirth, Southampton

 Sélavy by Di Donna

Exhibition view, Nuvolo | Chapo, 2022, Sélavy by Di Donna
COURTESY: Sélavy by Di Donna, Southampton

A few blocks away in a lane off a busy Southampton street, Sélavy is another design sister of an art gallery, where husband and wife Emmanuel and Christina Di Donna of the eponymous Upper East Side gallery present curated shows. The current offering, ‘Nuvolo | Chapo’, pairs the textural collage paintings of the 20th century Italian painter and screen printer Nuvolo (Giorgio Ascani) with his contemporary, the French woodworker Pierre Chapo. With an earthy colour palette and commitment to geometric forms and natural materials, the duo’s practices share unexpected similarities.

Nuvolo (Giorgio Ascani), ‘Untitled’, 1962
COURTESY: Nuvolo & Sélavy by Di Donna, Southampton

Nuvolo’s dyed and sewn deerskin from 1959 features various tan hues on a geometric layout, including a light brown shade echoed in Chapo’s 1966-67 elm and leather armchair and ottoman seat, which possesses a similarly casual geometry. 

Exhibition view, Nuvolo | Chapo, 2022, Sélavy by Di Donna
COURTESY: Sélavy by Di Donna, Southampton

Frampton Co – Exhibition The Barn

Exhibition view, ‘Curious Terrain’, 2022, Exhibition The Barn
COURTESY: Frampton Co

Elena Frampton, who runs her design and art advisory firm from Manhattan’s Flatiron District, made her way to Bridgehampton with ‘Exhibition The Barn’ four summers ago. Echoing her colourful and eclectic approach to interiors, the group shows at The Barn have brought various disciplines and tastes together with a focus on women makers. Frampton merges her two practices this summer with a capsule collection in collaboration with Connecticut-based pottery studio Dumais Made.

Dumais Made, ‘Verdant Collection Table Lamp 4’, 2022
COURTESY: Dumais Made & Frampton Co

The limited edition handmade stoneware lamps, titled ‘Verdant’, have come from the firm’s Litchfield studio exclusively for Frampton Co. The display of six lamps will add Dumais Made’s industrialist touch to Frampton’s colourful lens with green glaze finishes and minimalist silhouettes.  

Dumais Made, ‘Verdant Collection Table Lamp 1’, 2022
COURTESY: Dumais Made & Frampton Co

Jeff Lincoln Art + Design

Exhibition view, Liz Collins, ‘The Domestic Sphere, Recent Works in Textiles’, 2022, Jeff Lincoln Art + Design
COURTESY: Liz Collins & Jeff Lincoln Art + Design

Located a few minutes drive from Southampton’s influential art institutions Parrish Art Museum and The Watermill Center, ‘Collective by Jeff Lincoln Art + Design’ reflects the Upper East Side-based interior designer’s interest in manual skill and craft, and occupies a former power station built in the 19th century. 

There are several solo displays to see this summer including Liz Collins’s ‘The Domestic Sphere, Recent Works in Textiles’, which shows the Brooklyn-based textile artist’s geometric wall-hung and floor pieces. In them she employs a particular pattern language to decode queerness, femininity and labour, imbuing each piece with a bodily humour and sense of meditation. 

Exhibition view, Liz Collins, ‘The Domestic Sphere, Recent Works in Textiles’, 2022, Jeff Lincoln Art + Design
COURTESY: Liz Collins & Jeff Lincoln Art + Design

Also showing is ‘Great Waves of Land, The Sculpture of Nadia Yaron’, featuring the Hudson-based sculptor’s creations that similarly disrupt gendered classifications. Using grinders and chainsaws to hand carve large cuts of wood, the self-taught artist builds almost life-size sculptures that may also operate as stools.

Nadia Yaron, ‘Great Waves of Land, The Sculpture of Nadia Yaron’, 2022, Jeff Lincoln Art + Design
COURTESY: Nadia Yaron & Jeff Lincoln Art + Design

Lincoln’s presence in the region extends to a new collaboration with New York’s design powerhouse R& Company. Focusing on vintage furniture, lighting and objects, they present rare pieces by Brazilian, American, Scandinavian and Italian designers. Sculpture by Wendell Castle, a pair of Oscar Niemeyer sofas and a concrete table by architect Jorge Zalszupin are on display across the 1,500 foot space. There is an emphasis on mid-century pieces from Brazilian designers, providing a sneak preview of the gallery’s September exhibition with Joaquim Tenreiro and of their booth in the Paris edition of Design Miami/ the following month.  Rather than a backwater, Long Island is repositioning itself as ahead of the game.  

R& Company at Jeff Lincoln Art + Design, 2022
COURTESY: R& Company & Jeff Lincoln Art + Design / PHOTOGRAPH: Joe Kramm