There’s something powerful about objects made with intention. The inaugural Design Vanguard Makers are the creatives who understand that—founders, artists, and designers shaping form, color, and material into pieces that hold meaning. Their work reminds us that design isn’t only about the rooms we step into, but also the pieces we touch every day: a glass filled with light, a ceramic vessel on the counter, a candle burning in the corner of the room.
Across glassware, ceramics, scent, sculpture, and collectible decor, these makers are building more than products. They’re honoring lineage, preserving memory, and pushing design forward in ways that feel personal and grounded. Their pieces serve a purpose, but they also offer something deeper: a feeling, a story, a shift in how home can look and feel.
Together, these makers are defining the future of design—one object, one collection, and one thoughtful detail at a time.
MEET CINDY NGO, INK + PORCELAIN
Elevated stillness, artful objects, and a world built around women in design.
INK + PORCELAIN was born in a moment of reinvention for founder Cindy Ngo. After leaving a career in nursing, she followed a quiet pull toward design, story, and the emotional life of objects. What began as a small collection of handmade pieces has evolved into a platform that centers “Artful Objects Designed by Women,” highlighting their process, perspective, and the feeling embedded in every form.
Duality sits at the heart of her vision. Much like its name, INK + PORCELAIN moves between contrast and harmony—fluid and delicate, bold and restrained, graphic and serene. Cindy gravitates toward pieces the feel sculptural yet calm, expressive yet timeless, allowing black and white, light and shadow, softness and structure to coexist in a single silhouette. Collaboration is a crucial part of that language. She partners with women artists around the world, working closely to develop exclusive pieces that reflect both the maker’s hand and a shared pursuit of quiet, enduring beauty.
Storytelling guides every decision. Cindy thinks about how an object will live in someone’s home—the weight in hand, the way it catches light, the stillness it brings to a shelf or bedside table. Collections like the INK + PORCELAIN Containers, which move easily from vessel to lidded catch-all, embody her full creative process from sketch to prototype to production. Based in the Bay Area and shaped by its layered, diverse creative community, she has built a brand that feels intimate and global at once, inviting people to begin a relationship with objects that are meant to be collected over a lifetime.
A kaleidoscope of heirlooms inspired by her grandmother’s table.
For Stephanie Summerson Hall, Estelle Colored Glass began with a feeling: the desire to build a “forever collection” for her own home. While furnishing her space, she searched for colored glass that echoed childhood memories of antiquing with her grandmother Estelle, who lived just one street away when she was growing up. The brand she imagined—elegant, nostalgic, and collectible—did not exist, so she created it and named it in her honor.
Estelle’s pieces are designed as functional works of art, meant to be displayed in the open and used often. Stephanie sees no separation between beauty and utility; the coupe glass on a bar cart, the cake stand on a counter, and the decanter in a dining room are all part of a living tableau. Color is a defining language in the world. The collection follows the seasons—pastels arriving with warm weather, jewel tones deepening into fall and winter—mirroring the way she has always experienced color in her own life.
At the core of the brand is hospitality. Stephanie’s grandmother and mother taught her the power of a thoughtfully set table and the joy that comes from gathering loved ones with intention. That legacy lives in every piece, from the cake stand that feels especially symbolic to the stemware that quietly becomes part of milestone moments. Over time, Estelle’s glassware shifts from purchase to heirloom, carrying stories, celebrations, and everyday rituals forward. Stephanie’s work invites people to treat beauty as a daily practice rather than an occasional indulgence.
Building mythic, tender worlds through color, character, and care.
Artist Fritz Von Eric makes work that holds both weight and lightness. His illustrations and paintings explore queerness, family, and Black identity through figures that feel at once familiar and fantastical. He often describes his practice as telling stories “from the inside out,” drawing on a life that has contained both heaviness and levity. The result is a body of work where softness, intimacy, and joy sit alongside depth and history, giving Black life the full spectrum it deserves on the page and on the wall.
Place is woven into his visual language. Houston gave him imagination and spaciousness—long afternoons spent daydreaming, studying faces, and listening to slowed, chopped music that still scores his studio time. New York sharpened his vision, adding urgency, community, and a sense of belonging he had been searching for. Together, those influences shape a style that feels cinematic and emotional. His characters emerge from a space between memory and imagination, influenced by music, lyrics, and storytelling, and are rendered in bold color and gesture that feel like scenes from a dream.
Authenticity anchors the way he works and how he shows up publicly. Digital tools allow him to experiment, storyboard, and build worlds quickly, but he resists turning his practice into pure performance. He creates for himself first, then for the world, staying close to lived experience rather than chasing trends or algorithms. As part of a new generation of Black artists expanding what fine art can look and feel like, Fritz views himself as a maker of worlds and images that hold memory. His hope is simple and profound: that people leave his work feeling more possible, more seen, and more themselves.
Scent as story, legacy, and living archive of the Harlem Renaissance.
Harlem Candle Co. began long before founder Teri Johnson realized it would become a business. She started by pouring candles in her Harlem kitchen, gifting them to friends and family and falling in love with the alchemy of fragrance, wax, and memory. Encouraged by those early believers, she moved from experimenting to a fully formed brand rooted in the cultural history of Harlem and the artists who shaped it. Jazz played in the background as she blended, and the idea clicked: each candle could honor a legend—Billie, Langston, Josephine—through scent and story.
Teri’s background in travel and storytelling gave her a global lens on Black artistry. Time spent living in Paris opened her eyes to how deeply the world revered figures from the Harlem Renaissance. She studied how performers, writers, and musicians like Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, and Duke Ellington were celebrated abroad at moments when they faced discrimination at home. That contrast planted a seed. Harlem Candle Co. would not simply reference these icons; it would research them, honor their complexities, and translate their worlds into fragrance and design. Candles like those inspired by Josephine Baker weave together notes reminiscent of her favorite perfumes with visual details like sheet music and archival imagery, turning each vessel into a small, layered tribute.
Her creative process is meticulous and intuitive. Some scents arrive quickly; others, especially those tied to specific people, can take years of study and collaboration with perfumers to get right. Teri thinks about mood first—whether a candle should invite relaxation, spark creativity, or set a sensual tone—then builds a fragrant narrative around it. The impact extends beyond the notes themselves. Names printed on the glass, from Langston to Speakeasy, function as prompts and portals, reminding people of the legacies that shaped Harlem’s past and inform its present. After more than two decades in the neighborhood, Teri continues to build what feels like a new, fragrant renaissance, one candle at a time.
Everyday objects with sculptural presence and unapologetic color.
Sara Todd’s journey to Ekua Ceramics started with a single class taken for fun. Ten years ago, she sat at a wheel with no real plan other than curiosity. The process hooked her. She joined a pottery studio, carved out time alongside barista shifts and retail work, and slowly honed a visual language that felt distinctly her own. By 2017, her now-signature forms began to emerge. A year later, she created her first line sheet, cold-emailed shops she admired, and landed a hotel order through Los Angeles design destination Poketo. In 2020, she went all in—leaving her job managing a home goods store, securing her own studio, and committing to Ekua Ceramics full time.
Her pieces sit at the intersection of function and sculpture. Mugs, candleholders, and vessels are designed to be used, but they read as small artworks on a table or shelf. Color is often the starting point. Sara builds palettes from a single shade that catches her eye—a sweater in oxblood, a reference image, a combination from her well-worn Japanese “dictionary of color combinations”—then layers complementary tones around it. Architecture, nature, and fashion filter into the silhouettes, which lean quirky yet approachable. She is candid about the realities of handmade work; a $60 mug is not meant to compete with mass-produced pieces. It is meant to be a treat, a daily ritual object that makes a morning coffee feel more intentional.
As her practice evolves, so does her scale. Sara is increasingly drawn to lighting and larger forms, exploring chrome-like glazes, sconces, and sculptural pieces that live beyond the cupboard. Her recent work includes flowing candleholders that resemble silk in motion and experiments with softer, less symmetrical lines, a departure from her love of strict geometry. Working solo—handling production, shipping, customer service, and social—comes with challenges in a shifting economy, but she approaches the future with a steady, grounded optimism. The next era of Ekua Ceramics leans into pieces you notice the moment you enter a room, carrying the same offbeat charm and color-forward perspective that first drew people to her work.
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