New York, alexis-and-ginger.com
Alexis Tingey and Ginger Gordon’s studio benches happened to be positioned next to each other during their furniture design Master’s program at RISD, and after two years of sharing ideas and inspirations, the pair decided to set up a business together after graduating last year. 2023 saw the prolific pair launch not one but two impressive debut series — one of them part of The Sight Unseen Collection — whose wide-ranging materials and forms take inspiration from the designers’ extensive archive of architectural and cultural imagery.

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

American design is reflective — a collage of experiences and histories. Stories emerge from a breadth of voices, and there is nothing succinct about it. There is an unwillingness to be tethered and a yearning for a new morning. American design feels both fast and slow; it is innovative but just waking up, working hard now and hopeful for what’s ahead.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?

This April will mark our studio’s first full year. In 2024, we’ll launch our third collection. For this next series we’re inviting in a few new materials and processes. We’re looking towards light as a medium and working with materials of transparency, including stained glass and textiles, while continuing to bring in aspects of metalwork and carved wood. These objects are a continuation of storytelling through layered materiality and form.

What inspires or informs your work in general?

There’s a wall in our studio that’s in constant motion — an assemblage of inspirations like photographs, pencil sketches, tacked-up fragments of textiles, and material samples. The images we arrange and the collages we create are a visual poetry, a means of sketching and finding meeting points in our thinking. Our inspirations are often connected by a common thread of tactility and storytelling.

We’re fascinated by the stories an object holds, written through its processes of making and the various hands it passes through. Handcraft traditionally associated with female makers — such as embroidery, quilting, and lacemaking — are a continuous touchstone for our work. This inspiration stems from the women in our lives and early memories of their craft. Our observations of these women creating were some of our first experiences viewing and learning how things were made, designed, and collected. These influences inspire the forms, materiality, and stories we look to write through objects.

There’s an image that hangs on our wall: Untitled (Surrealist Hands), 1939, by Claude Cahun. Layered hands reaching, each slightly higher than the one before, captured in a gelatin silver print. Next to it is pinned Victorian gloves, an image of a sundial and an iron gate, and just slightly further, a snippet of a hand-pleated textile. It’s through collections of fragments and material explorations that our objects are inspired and revealed.