Inside Todd Merrill Studio, 2020 (Full video)

Since 2000, Todd Merrill Studio has been renowned for its glamorous and eclectic mix of twentieth-century furniture and lighting. Originally located in a 500-square-foot space at the corner of Stanton and Ludlow on New York City’s Lower East Side, the pioneering gallery was one of the of the first to promote modernist and postmodernist American studio artisans including Karl Springer, James Mont, Tommi Parzinger, Paul Laszlo, Paul Evans, Philip and Kelvin LaVerne, Samuel Marx, Arthur Elrod, Harvey Probber, T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, and Vladimir Kagan. The gallery also features a beautiful selection of European mid-century modern designer furniture and lighting by makers including Dunbar, Monteverdi-Young, Widdecomb, Grosfeld House, Venini, Vistosi, Barovier, and Murano. Merrill’s uncompromising eye has attracted loyal clientele. As rocker Lenny Kravitz told the Financial Timesin 2008, “His taste is impeccable – he’s absolutely the best at what he does.” In 2009, Elle Décor wrote, “[Merrill has] a fearless eye and a passion for distinctive furnishings.”

Todd Merrill grew up immersed in the antiques trade, representing the third generation of his family in the business. Though his family’s collecting passion was for eighteenth and nineteenth-century American furniture, at the start of his career, Merrill shifted his focus to the post-war era of American design. During the years that followed World War II, a flourishing of money, creativity, and style in America’s great cities allowed designers to create outstanding decorative furnishings unlike anything seen before. One of the first gallerists to realize the significance of this formerly overlooked period of design, Merrill dramatically increased its popularity.

In 2008, the gallery introduced Custom Originals, a line of furniture designed by Merrill himself. Merrill’s signature creations reflect his vast experience with twentieth-century design and knowledge of contemporary tastes.

In 2009, shortly after Rizzoli published Modern Americana: Studio Furniture from High Craft to High Glam(2008), Merrill’s seminal book on the post-war period of American design, he launched Studio Contemporary, an exhibition-based program representing an international group of established and emerging contemporary artists. Today, the work of these artists is in high demand among collectors, designers, and curators around the world.

Though the Studio Contemporary program presents a diverse group of artistic styles and media, the artists all share an underlying drive to push the materials that comprise their works to their absolute aesthetic limits. Their dynamic, unique, and frequently groundbreaking works contribute to today’s increasingly relevant grey space between art and design.

With the gallery’s support, these new artists’ works have entered the collections of major private and public patrons and prestigious museums including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Museum of Art and Design in New York; the High Museum in Atlanta; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

Throughout the year, the gallery exhibits at some of the best art and design fairs in the world. A selection of these includes The Salon Art + Design in New York; Collective Design Fair in New York; Art Miami in Miami; Design Miami in Basel, Switzerland and Miami; FOG: Design + Art in San Francisco; the Pavilion of Arts and Design in New York, Paris, and London; Masterpiece in London; Gallery Seoul in Seoul; Spring Masters in New York; The International Fine Art & Antiques Dealer Show in New York; Zona MACO in Mexico City; Tajan in Paris; and Design Days Dubai in Dubai.

Todd Merrill Studio is located in New York City, with a second white-box gallery space in Southampton, New York.