Women Designers Highlighted in Billings’ 2025 Spring Sale

Women designers have been historically underrepresented in the broader design industry, a result of ingrained social bias and fewer professional opportunities. Yet this ratio is changing. Modern and contemporary women designers are gaining wider recognition and followings, including in the auction market. Billings’ 2025 spring sale, scheduled for April 5, 2025, will particularly feature modern and contemporary women designers. Here are a few of their innovative works from the auction catalog. 

Kelly Wearstler 

Available from renowned American designer Kelly Wearstler is a contemporary ‘Crescent’ cabinet composed of lacquered wood, walnut, bronze, and antique mirrored glass (lot #20; estimate: USD 10,000 – $15,000). This piece, which measures approximately 72 inches high, hosts a scattering of amorphous metal and glass pulls on the front. Ivory lacquer provides visual contrast for the piece. Inside are six drawers, two interior shelves, and an antiqued mirror backing. 

Kelly Wearstler opened her design firm in the mid-1990s. She initially specialized in furnishing luxury hotels before branching out to design home goods. Wearstler has since built a successful business producing furniture, rugs, wallpaper, couture, and more. A defining feature of her work is a flair for drama, bold colors, and unexpected elements. “I look at everything as a stage,” Wearstler told The Guardian in a 2002 interview. “When I walk into a room, I want to be moved.”

Lindsey Adelman 

In Billings’ 2025 spring sale, another key lot from a woman designer is a chandelier by Lindsey Adelman (lot #414; estimate: $6,000 – $8,000). This ‘Branching Bubble’ example from the 2000s is formed of brass and sky-blue glass. Adelman’s Branching Bubble series is now considered an icon of contemporary lighting design, with its carefully balanced arms and glass orbs that together evoke a blossoming tree branch in spring. 

Based in Manhattan, Lindsey Adelman has actively pushed the lighting design field forward since 1996. Her work merges industrial design with organic forms. Adelman was attracted to lighting from her college days, intrigued by lighting’s ability to transform a room without needing to accommodate the human form. Statement lighting fixtures became Adelman’s specialty. The designer noted in a 2014 Bard Graduate Center interview that her sources of inspiration include natural growths taking over industrial elements, like weeds covering a fence. That untamed force is balanced in her designs by modernist, intentional imperfection. 

Sonya Sombreuil 

Billings’ spring sale will feature work by another notable woman artist: Sonya Sombreuil. Available for bid is a monumental custom étagère from the Los Angeles-based artist (lot #332; estimate: $5,000 – $7,000). This large piece, composed of painted plywood, acrylic, and a found tree branch, measures over 11 feet wide and five feet tall. It contains numerous unique details, including moon, star, and heart cut-outs and the word “Alex” written in marker on a supportive tree branch. The étagère was exhibited with Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles in late 2023. 

Sonya Sombreuil maintains a wide-reaching, community-based art practice that moves fluidly between mediums. In addition to painting, Sombreuil is known for her t-shirt company, ephemera production, and curatorial projects. She describes her work in an artist’s statement as “anti-design,” a sentiment that was explored in Sombreuil’s collaboration with Jeffrey Deitch Gallery. The available étagère was used to display smaller artworks and books as part of the installation. 

In addition to these works, the upcoming Billings sale will feature furniture by William Emmerson, Isamu Noguchi, and Pierre Jeanneret; decorative art by Dirk van Erp, Toshiko Takaezu, and Ai Weiwei; and fine art by Beverly Politi, Retna, and Pablo Picasso. 

Billings’ Spring Modern Art + Design 2025 auction will begin at 1:00 PM EDT on April 5, 2025. To browse the complete catalog and register to bid, visit Billings. 

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