Vy Voi — Steffany Trần

Refugee parents, childhood split between San José and Saigon, industrial design training, then Lippincott and Smart Design — and she left because the briefs were problems to solve rather than things to make. The Rễ Cây lamps use dó, a bark paper produced in Vietnam for over eight hundred years; she went and found one of the few families still making it. Shades shaped from traditional kites and folded banana leaves, ceramic bases glazed in the loose Vietnamese gesture she taught herself at a community center. Next body of work is 17th-century lacquer. Her line — if we can covet moon jars and Japanese joinery, make room for this too.