Since founding her interdisciplinary studio Another Human in 2017, Leah Ring has brought her sensibility—a bit Memphis but not nostalgic, and sunny without falling for kitsch—to residential spaces throughout California, and even a minty fresh pop-up for Boy Smells. But it’s her conceptual objects, or what she told Surface she thought of as “sculptural furniture,” that truly wows: her Zorg chair is part trombone, part throne, while her 2021 Ferngully collection pools pastel slices of acrylic upon mirrors and tabletops for a tropical treat.
Doodle, her latest collection, may at first seem like a sharp turn toward the gestural. Its swipes of plated steel arching around cast resin to form a table and pair of chairs that more quickly bring to mind the illustrations of Jean Cocteau than the fanciful flights of Ettore Sottsass. Yet they might also honor the brain-unsticking fiddling of playing with a paperclip. Finding hope in such a humdrum object is part of what gives Ring’s work such charm.
