At Salon Art + Design 2025, Innovation, Form and Function Meet Market Enthusiasm

Beautifully curated and seamlessly uniting art and design, Salon Art + Design 2025 unfolded once again within the grand setting of the Park Avenue Armory, offering a natural elegance few fairs achieve. It’s an event that never feels forced or overly eclectic; here, 50 global exhibitors assembled a calibrated and elegant mix celebrating craftsmanship at the crossroads of tradition and innovation. The fair maintains the thrill of discovery, offering rare and exquisite objects that require no connoisseur’s credentials to appreciate—especially when the Upper East Side crowd begins shipping champagne. As director Jill Bokor told Observer last year, “The atmosphere of the Park Avenue Armory is perfect for an event like Salon, because it, in itself, is a curated work of design.”

At opening night on November 6, that atmosphere—along with the fair’s hallmark elegance—was palpable in every corner, from the Art Deco treasures at Bernard Goldberg Fine Art radiating the charm of the Belle Époque across continents (several of which sold by the opening night) to the ancient South Arabian and Byzantine pieces at Ariadne, which extended the fair’s reach far beyond the 20th Century into the timeless spirituality of the ancient world.

Although design and furniture have been among the collectible categories most affected by Trump’s tariffs—some of which are set to rise to 50 percent in January 2026—dealers at Salon are still presenting an impressive array of modern and contemporary design from across geographies. Several gallerists admitted that their participation was possible only because their pieces had already been imported, noting that the U.S. market is likely to feel the full impact of the new duties in the coming months. Under the executive order signed by Trump on September 29, a 25 percent tariff applies to wood imports and derivative products—including upholstered furniture and kitchen cabinets—effective starting October 14. Imports of softwood timber and lumber face a 10 percent rate, while upholstered wooden products incur a 25 percent duty. Kitchen cabinets and their components are likewise taxed at 25 percent per order, with rates set to climb in January 2026 to 30 percent for upholstered furniture and 50 percent for cabinetry and related parts. This comes at a moment of remarkable strength for the market for collectible design and decorative arts: according to ArtTactic, the category grew 20.4 percent in 2025 to reach $172 million, up from $143 million the previous year.

High attendance at Salon Art + Design’s opening night reaffirmed not only the enduring allure of the fair’s finely curated intersection of art and design but also the growing breadth of its audience—one increasingly active within this more fluid and inclusive space where disciplines meet. The evening drew an exceptional roster of collectors, curators and tastemakers, described by many as “a who’s who of design and art.” The aisles buzzed with familiar figures from the worlds of culture and collecting, including Jeremy Anderson, Paul Arnhold, Alex Assouline, Jill Bokor, Elizabeth Callender, Rafael de Cárdenas, Lady Liliana Cavendish, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Linda Fargo, Alessia, Fe and Paola Fendi, Douglas Friedman, John and Christine Gachot, Monique Gibson, Nathalie de Gunzburg, Maja Hoffmann, Mathieu Lehanneur, Dominique Lévy, Ben and Hillary Macklowe, Lee Mindel, Carlos Mota, Dr. Daniella Ohad, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Claire Olshan, Bryan O’Sullivan, Nina Runsdorf, Irina Shayk, Robert Stilin, Sara Story, Indré Rockefeller, Emmanuel Tarpin, Jamie Tisch, Nicola Vassell, Stellene Volandes, Emily Weiss and Charles and Daphne Zana, among many others.

In one of the first rows, Converso Modern’s booth paired Alexander Calder’s vibrant tapestries—crafted in Guatemala and Nicaragua—with a tribute to Pennsylvania’s New Hope Modern Craft Movement, the 1960s community that bridged traditional craftsmanship with modern design. Highlights included sculptural metal and carved wood pieces by Phillip Lloyd Powell and Paul Evans, shown alongside the elemental modernism of George Nakashima.

Awarded this year’s Best Booth, the London-based Crosta Smith Gallery presented a moody, cinematic homage to 1930s Art Deco—refined, atmospheric and irresistibly elegant. Marking the centenary of the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, the defining event of the Art Deco era, the gallery presented a selection of impeccably preserved works in wood, lacquer and galuchat celebrating a century of decorative mastery. Each piece reflected the sophistication of the 1920s and 1930s, including exquisite creations by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Katsu Hamanaka and Clément Rousseau. Particularly striking was a pair of lacquer panels by Hamanaka depicting Adam and Eve dancing in nature with quintessential Deco elegance—the sinuous lines and subtle symbolism balanced by the sensual tension of intertwined snakes. Equally rare was Ruhlmann’s méridienne in amboyna burl wood, gilt bronze and silk bourrette upholstery—a unique variant of the Marozeau model commissioned by the Borderie family, epitomizing his sculptural refinement. Founded in 2018 by Marine Edith Crosta and Daniel Smith after collecting Art Deco while furnishing their home in the south of France, the gallery is now participating in all leading design fairs, including PAD London.

Nearby, Downtown-based Bossa Furniture continued to serve as a bridge between the U.S. and Brazil, showcasing the warmth of modernist Brazilian design through an intergenerational dialogue between Joaquim Tenreiro—one of the founders of modern Brazilian design—and contemporary designer Lucas Recchia, accented with a vintage stool by Lina Bo Bardi. Returning for their second year at the fair and fresh from Design Miami/Paris, Bossa sold a unique chaise by Joaquim Tenreiro during the preview, priced at $90,000, along with two pieces by Recchia.

Many exhibitors adopted a curatorial approach that seamlessly integrated art and design, blurring distinctions between collectible furniture, fine art and historical masterpieces. At Incollect, a captivating juxtaposition paired modernist and contemporary design with an Anish Kapoor reflective sculpture and playful Picasso ceramics, creating a lively dialogue between modern icons.

Elsewhere, Galerie Gabriel skillfully paired modern design with works by Sam Falls, while several booths leaned fully into fine art. Opera Gallery, with its global presence, offered an interior-friendly selection of blue-chip names designed to appeal to Salon’s broad audience. Standouts included a striking George Condo drawing priced around $100,000, a sensuous Picasso work on paper and sculptures by Manolo Valdés—among them a wooden reinterpretation of his Menina series inspired by Velázquez. Another highlight was Carlos Cruz-Diez’s optically mesmerizing Physichromie Panam 112, shown alongside pieces by Juan Genovés, Thomas Dillon, Keith Haring, Cho Sung-Hee, Jae Ko and André Lanskoy.

The 60-year-old Galerie Gmurzynska, specializing in 20th-century modern and contemporary classics, impressed with a monumental Louise Nevelson work, City Series (1974), spanning an entire wall and exemplifying her mature phase of assemblage sculpture. The booth also included three mixed-media collages by Nevelson, a rare early wood panel by Robert Indiana from his Coenties Slip period and Yves Klein’s F 48 (1961), a luminous piece from his Monochrome und Feuer exhibition. A rare surviving box construction by Dan Basen from the 1960s New York avant-garde rounded out the presentation. “We love taking part in Salon Art + Design. The blend of art, design and jewelry is truly exceptional, a great experience. The opening was extremely well attended, and we have sold one work so far,” said gallery director Isabelle Bscher, who represents the third generation of the Swiss-born Gmurzynska family at Salon Art + Design 2025.

New York-based Onishi Gallery, known for championing contemporary Japanese art and design, presented “Clay, Iron, and Fire: The Bizen and Setouchi Heritage,” a striking tribute to Japan’s enduring craft traditions. The exhibition celebrated the intertwined legacies of Bizen ceramics—born 900 years ago from the region’s iron-rich clay and revered by tea masters for their organic textures—and Osafune swordmaking, famed for its refined curvature, subtle grain and balance. With works ranging from a $2,900 sword to ceramic masterpieces priced between $30,000 and $50,000, the booth embodied Japan’s devotion to transforming natural materials into lasting beauty, infused with the timeless aesthetics of wabi-sabi and ichi-go ichi-e.

Similarly devoted to the Japanese spirit of craftsmanship, the minimalist, clean booth of Ippodo Gallery explored the meeting point between Eastern sensibility and Western material practice, featuring Ymer & Malta’s pioneering resin light sculptures (Paris), Akira Hara’s intricate Murrine glass works (Venice) and Andoche Praudel’s tactile ceramics (Loubignac). Examining materiality as a universal language, their works dissolved the boundary between art and function, finding beauty in tactile intelligence. By the close of opening day at 9 p.m., the gallery had sold more than $60,000 worth of art. “The preview event drew a large number of enthusiastic visitors, and it’s clear that the fair has grown and evolved since last year,” Churou Wang, the gallery’s associate director, told Observer. “We’re looking forward to seeing how the coming days unfold.”

On the contemporary design front, London’s Gallery FUMI stood out with a presentation celebrating its new representation of San Francisco-based artist and designer Jesse Schlesinger, coinciding with his first-ever design exhibition, Pacific, at the gallery’s London flagship. Ahead of a dedicated presentation at FOG Design + Art in San Francisco, FUMI showcased Schlesinger’s sculptural furniture—works merging nature, philosophy and material consciousness. A second-generation carpenter deeply rooted in the Bay Area, Schlesinger crafts with locally salvaged wood, blending ceramics, bronze, glass and wood into meditations on texture, surface and function.

London’s Charles Burnand Gallery, which specializes in collectible design and lighting, presented a captivating booth that reflected the growing shift in taste toward design rooted in organic sensitivity and material depth. Its curated presentation, “Liminal Monuments: The Edge of Becoming,” unfolded as an elegant choreography of designers across geographies, exploring form in a state of becoming—continuous growth, evolution and transformation. Every object in the booth felt interconnected and evocative of natural structures, from plant life to geology, offering a contemporary design language that draws inspiration from nature to rediscover the soul of materials and humanity’s relationship with them.

Particularly outstanding among the booth’s luminous creations was Midnight Tulip by Ian Milnes—a meditation on the transience of beauty, capturing a fleeting moment suspended between bloom and disintegration. Inspired by the 16th-century phenomenon of “broken tulips” and crafted from sycamore, walnut, cherry and resin, its marquetry petals appeared to drift outward in slow motion, their blackened, watercolor-like surfaces evoking both bloom and decay—embodying a space where fragility and radiance coexist. Equally striking were the organically graceful, cocoon-like wire-crochet lamps by Korean designer Kyeok Kim, floating in the corner like luminous cellular formations that connected the micro- and macrocosmos through shared patterns and order. Handcrafted from fine metal mesh, these sculptural lights existed in a liminal space—both soft and metallic, airy yet architectural—expressing fragility and endurance in perfect balance.

And as always, Salon Art + Design offered museum-quality treasures at the top tier of the market. A standout among them was Alexander the Great, presented by Phoenix Ancient Art—a gilded bronze Roman sculpture from the 1st Century with obsidian and alabaster eyes that radiated the aura of a rediscovered world. Believed to be one of only two known portraits of Alexander—the other housed in Herculaneum—the work was a rare masterpiece of ancient craftsmanship.

Todd Merrill Studio’s booth also bridged designers across geographies, uniting leading artists from North America, Europe and South Korea, reaffirming the gallery’s reputation for material innovation and sculptural form. Highlights included Amsterdam-based Maarten Vrolijk’s Sakura Pendant Lighting—a luminous evolution of his Sakura Vessels—and German artist Markus Haase’s new bronze and onyx works, including a monumental chandelier and reimagined Circlet series pieces that merged sculpture and illumination through exceptional craftsmanship.

While some of the biggest names in collectible design—Carpenters Workshop, Friedman Benda, Salon 94 and Nilufar—were absent this year, likely due to the proximity of the Paris and Miami fairs, their absence was hardly felt. Instead, Salon Art + Design 2025 unfolded with a rare sense of cohesion and restraint, offering a stage where eras and disciplines engaged in a fluid dialogue that held at its center a timeless sense of beauty born from the convergence of material awareness, craftsmanship and innovation—qualities that defined the fair’s most striking functional yet evocative objects.

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