Best in Show.

On the tails of a winning tabletop design, an emerging Turkish talent looks to the future to establish his own brand.

Tamer Nakışçı was one of 11 designers to be spotlighted in this year’s ICFF Studio, a scholarship program and competition for emerging talents to take their single best prototype on the industry-wide stage during ICFF. For his presentation, the 32-year-old Turkish designer exhibited the Relax tabletop collection, a 14-piece bone china set with subtle, irregularly undulating edges that form a biomorphic effect when stacked in multiples.

“As a designer, I have always been interested in the relationship between objects, spaces, and people,” he says, noting that the varying shapes of the plates are meant to introduce an element of tactile surprise to the everyday.

Since the launch of ICFF Studio 10 years ago by the fair’s organizers and Jerry Helling, president of Bernhardt Design, the program has forecasted the rise of several established designers, including Jonah Takagi, Ini Archibong, Brad Ascalon, Nolen Niu, and Rita Jiang—many of whom have gone on to successfully establish their own practices. Nakışçı, who splits his time between London and Istanbul, collaborating with his brother at his family’s interiors firm, holds similar ambitions. This fall, he plans to bring his winning design into production through his own independent brand and latest venture, Futureisblank.

“I believe that design has the power to restore our consciousness and change our perspective about the things around us,” he says, on the experimental nature of the project. “I’m trying to wake people up, and take them back to that stage where they believe everything is possible, and the future is blank.”