At FOG Design + Art 2025 in San Francisco last weekend (23-26 January), one of the gallerists greeted visitors from the comfort of a chair designed and handcrafted not by one of his artists, but by his wife. It was difficult to miss the metaphor presented by this couple, who embodied the show’s greatest virtue: FOG marries art and design instead of divorcing them. Turns out, like some couples, the two are more interesting together.
During the fair’s tenth anniversary in 2024, San Francisco’s first branded ‘Art Week’ took shape around FOG. In fact, creative critical mass has been forming around the Bay in recent years and, at the 2025 fair, a strong roster of satellites settled in. ‘Works In Progress’ was the latest in a series of design shows promoting dialogue within and around the Bay Area’s design and craft communities. Artists in the Sausalito Headlands opened their foggy coastal studios to visitors across the Golden Gate Bridge. And at the Point Reyes Blunk Space gallery, opened in 2021 by the JB Blunk Estate, a gem of an exhibition (‘Rio Kobayashi + Fritz Rauh’) paired painting with sculptural wood furniture.
Desk lamp from the ‘Folia’ collection by Federico Stefanovich
(Image credit: Alejandro Orozco. Courtesy of AGO Projects and the designer.)
Meanwhile, inside FOG’s two pavilions at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 59 international galleries gathered, including 13 under the rubric of FOG Focus, a showcase of emerging artists and galleries. Straight-up art was still in the majority down the aisles but design – from furniture and flatware to food –was well-represented in booths and in the event’s artful amenities. BOG was a shop of handmade books curated by publisher and SF Art Book Fair co-organiser Luca Antonucci. Park Life hosted a pop-up shop stocking the latest issue of Apartamento beside some brilliantly obscure book titles (including one exploring a language developed by construction workers using adhesive tape). FOG MARKT greeted visitors with ceramics by Len Carella, glassware by Jesse Schlesinger, and jewellery by Blunk Shop (shop the JB Blunk rings that won a Wallpaper* Design Award 2025). A bistro in the main pavilion even let visitors preview an upcoming restaurant, to be called Lucania, from the creator of the Marina District’s beloved A16.
Here are just a few of the highlights we found at FOG.
Our highlights from FOG Design + Art 2025 in San Francisco
Peter Blum Gallery, New York
‘Jolene’ dining chair
(Image credit: Peter Blum Gallery, New York)
She’s not one of the gallery’s artists, but Kate Casey created the seating that adorned its booth. The ‘Jolene’ chair is made from locally sourced hardwood with a reeded frame. Casey weaves a single continuous cotton cord onto the chair, which becomes both a loom and a canvas. In the process, she draws on traditional tapestry techniques, inspired by the combination of this historically female craft with the historically male-dominated field of woodworking.
Sarah Myerscough Gallery, London
Christopher Kurtz, ‘Sheets Credenza’ with shelves
(Image credit: Christopher Kurtz)
The Myerscough booth was a trove of exquisitely crafted pieces: ethereal glassware by George William Bell, based in Monterey, California, and massive, driftwood-like dome lights by British artist and maker Nic Webb. Two concepts – nature and nurture and the perfection that arises from imperfection – came together in the monumental split-log ‘Cleft’ cabinets by another Brit, Peter Marigold, in his continuing collaboration with Tadanori Tozawa’s Japanese woodworking shop Hinoki Kougei. The ‘Sheets Credenza’ and the sculptural shelves that float above it, by American (and former Martin Puryear studio assistant) Christopher Kurtz, were as clever as they are exquisitely crafted. The stacked shelves appear to be merely sculptural shims until they open outward to reveal drawers. Equal parts art, artisanry and design, they float on the wall like magic.
Superhouse, New York
(Image credit: Courtesy of Superhouse)
Installed to resemble a parlour in a bourgeois, colonial-era Brussels home, Superhouse’s booth points to the Congolese origins of the Belgian Art Nouveau movement. Belgian-Congolese architect and interior designer Kim Mupangilaï created sinuous furniture that explores how 19th-century Belgian creatives co-opted the Congo’s raw materials and cultural motifs. The accompanying collage-like tapestry by American fibre artist and painter Maris Van Vlack suggests a mesmerising arcade of stained-glass windows. Woven by hand, it is marked with stitches, drawing and painting and then built up with industrial jacquard techniques and stoll knitting to feel layered – and laden – with memory.
Hostler Burrows, Los Angeles
(Image credit: Joe Kramm)
‘Waves’ is a hand-tufted tapestry by Swedish graphic designer and artist Camilla Iliefski. She uses depth, gradients of colour and contrasting hues to joyful effect. If you’ve been looking for another star of rug-based wall art to add to the sculptural, collaged work of Jonathan Josefsson and the swank, shag-forward creativity of Dimorestudio, Iliefski delivers.
Herald St, London
Matt Paweski’s Chair 1 (Melon) Chair 2 (Butter) Chair 3 (Avocado) Chair 4 (Rootbeer), Work Table (Melon), 2023. On wall, Naotaka Hiro’s Untitled, 2024
(Image credit: Courtesy: Herald St, London)
Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based Matt Paweski’s work table and chairs blend Jean Prouvé with Mecanoo and a Motor City native’s love of sheet metal. A sculptor and skilled colorist, Paweski’s gratifyingly orthogonal pieces balanced out the mixed media canvases nearby. We just wish he’d turn more of his artwork into furniture.
AGO Projects, Mexico City
‘Folia’ ceiling and floor lamps
(Image credit: Alejandro Orozco. Courtesy of AGO Projects and the designer.)
Yet another talent emerging from Latin America, Mexican artist Federico Stefanovich handcrafted his ‘Folia’ floor lamps using carved solid wood, brass sheet, and cast bronze. His organic forms take their cues from plants, seeds, and fungi. The lights appear to rest in effortless balance because Stefanovich engineered each to carefully distribute its weight.
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