Chris Wolston was on a Fulbright grant in Colombia, researching manual and manufactured modes of production, when he became obsessed with an object that embodied both: the humble aluminum hot-chocolate pitcher in his apartment. “Everyday objects here have a handmade quality,” the rising design star says by phone from his current studio in Medellín. (He splits his time between there and New York.) “They’re like individual sculptures.”

Chicharron table (2018).

Condesa Plant Chair (2017).

Though Wolston originally came to Medellín to study pre-Columbian ceramics and brick-making, his newfound material crush took hold. First he tracked down the pitcher’s producers: a team of local artisans specializing in sand-casting. Then, observing how they melted soda cans, engine blocks, and other discarded scraps—shaping the metal in molds of sand—the RISD graduate began forging his own tables, lamps, and chairs, using chunks of foam to create unexpected shapes and silhouettes. When he had an idea for a dining table, he ran into a challenge: “The foundry is so small that I couldn’t cast anything large-scale,” explains Wolston. “I had to deconstruct my ideas and figure out how I could work within these constraints.”

Wolston pours aluminum into a mold.

Casting dozens of small shapes that could later be soldered together, he has developed a new body of work, which will be the subject of a show opening May 18 at Manhattan’s The Future Perfect gallery. “There are hands, butts, arched backs, a nose, an ear,” he says of the anthropomorphic, subtly subversive puzzle pieces that now form cabinets, tables, vases, mirrors, chairs, and more. “I’m combining all these body parts with tropical-leaf patterns.”

A patinated piece awaits application.

The Future Perfect debuted examples from the series at Design Miami this past December. At Patrick Parrish’s booth, meanwhile, Wolston exhibited pieces from his ongoing experimentation with terra-cotta, in which he painstakingly builds up the age-old material into tables, planters, and chairs that (like the handmade bricks he studied in Medellín) reveal deep finger marks. As with his most recent ceramics—splashed in electric-pink and green car paint—he is now introducing color into his aluminum work, anodizing the metal to achieve rainbow hues. He’s also trading raw textures for a more finished look, toying with techniques like hammering and mirror-polishing. “The new work is irreverent,” says Wolston. “But simultaneously, it’s a little more grown-up.” chriswolstonom