Design in Depth: Stacy Kunstel at the Architectural Digest Home Show

In case you didn’t have a chance to go to the 2014 Architectural Digest Home Design Show last week, here are a few highlights.

One of my first stops was in the booth shared by Judy Ross Textiles and Michelle Varian, both New York–based designers who have their own lines. Judy’s work has long been a go-to for me in styling interiors. Her geometric rug and pillow designs have a way of freshening more traditional interiors or giving some textural or colorful warmth to more modern spaces.

Photos by Stacy Kunstel

Michelle, who also has a store in SoHo, keeps expanding her design reach, showing new pillows, wallpaper designs based on her drawings, and a line of beautiful copper and brass pendant lights that she’s having made in Sarajevo.

Brooklyn Glass, a glass studio that offers classes, has a wonderful line of colored-glass containers that would look fantastic as a grouping. Their lighting and neon work is also beautiful, and you can even take neon or glass-blowing classes.

I actually heard about DBO Home’s live-edge bureau before I even reached the Sharon, Connecticut, couple’s booth. Daniel Oates crafts the furnishings, which along with the bureau included a small daybed with steam-bent legs, while Dana Brandwein Oates makes each of the intricately detailed ceramic pieces.

Having a heart-warming story and a beautiful product line is such a winning combination. Beyt by 2b Design, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, collects architectural remnants from conflict zones to create their lamps. The couple, Raja Moubarak and Benedicte de Vanssay de Blavous Moubarak, watched traditional homes around them being destroyed while living in Lebanon. Using these pieces is a way of preserving the past and creating opportunity for people in war-torn parts of the Middle East. They also have a shop in Cambridge.

Karkula, a Williamsburg-based store, features a number of designers’ works, and it was the whimsy of this particular lighting collection and these furnishings that caught my eye.