Ceramists tend to have an easygoing embrace of fate. Misfirings happen in the kiln, and happy accidents do too. Last year, as the New York City–based designer Danny Kaplan began canvassing for a larger Brooklyn workshop—a search complicated by steep commercial rents and the heavy costs of necessary structural buildouts—his longtime production manager, Val Shamma, shared unexpected news. Shamma and his wife were planning a move to North Adams, Massachusetts.
The realization arrived almost organically for the studio, which is best known for its striking sculptural lighting and contemporary furniture. "It occurred to us that maybe the solution was actually to follow him," Kaplan says.
The Berkshires city, like so many once-bustling industrial mill towns across the Northeast, had experienced a severe economic downturn in the mid-20th century before cultural institutions like MASS MoCA helped put it firmly back on the cultural map. Within this revitalized landscape, former industrial spaces beckoned to creative practitioners seeking room to breathe and work. "Once the pieces started to fall into place, it made perfect sense," Kaplan recalls. He eventually secured a roomy, ground-floor warehouse situated inside a thoughtfully converted historic textile mill.
Now, with its electrical system updated to support three industrial kilns and a newly installed glass garage door designed to flood the expansive interior with natural light, this is where Kaplan executes much of his ceramic casting and larger sculptural work. Meanwhile, his original Bushwick workshop maintains its focused operations, continuing to produce lamps and other hand-built pieces for clients and collectors.
This past summer in the Berkshires, the studio was a hive of activity, churning out slim, colorful tiles destined for his Delf collection—a collaborative effort with Vince Patti’s furniture firm, Lesser Miracle. Named after the Dutch word for canal or ditch, delf refers to the characteristic grooved wood channel that securely holds the tile in place.
The creative partnership between Kaplan and Patti began in 2024, when they first teamed up on a custom bed for Kaplan featuring an architectural, wraparound headboard accented by a distinctive border of inset tiles. This fall, the follow-up collection, Delf II, extends that distinct design language across a broader range of domestic objects, including a console, a coffee table, a desk, and a nightstand. Each piece is crafted in rich, oiled oak and features sophisticated octagonal tops. The ceramic components are meticulously fired and glazed in a wide range of colors at Kaplan’s North Adams facility before traveling south to Lesser Miracle’s woodshop in Brooklyn, where Patti oversees the final assembly and integration of wood and clay.
While this new geographic chapter has dramatically increased Kaplan’s physical production capabilities and output capacity, the designer is ultimately more interested in the broader philosophical opportunities the space poses for expansive thinking. Rather than simply viewing the warehouse as a manufacturing hub, he envisions it as a creative sanctuary. In time, Kaplan hopes to host visiting artists who are in need of a temporary scene change, while simultaneously knitting himself closer into the fabric of the North Adams community.
"It’s very serene," he says, reflecting on his new surroundings, "and ceramic people love community."
