Amy Auscherman
Courtesy of Amy Auscherman, photography by Carson Davis Brown.
HURS CURATORS
AMY AUSCHERMAN
The design connoisseur shares her favorite brands, products and places
Amy Auscherman knows more about design history than most could ever dream of. As the Director of Archives and Brand Heritage at MillerKnoll, she’s the steward of some of the most iconic pieces in modern furniturefrom the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman and Noguchi Table from Herman Miller to the Womb Chair and Saarinen Table from Knoll. But her job isn’t just about preserving the past—it’s about making it relevant today. She’s a master of unearthing stories, connecting dots, and breathing new life into legacy products. Auscherman’s approach is as curious as it is meticulous, and with a keen eye for detail and a flair for storytelling, she’s redefining how we think about design history. She’s co-authored several influential books, including Herman Miller: A Way of Living, cementing her as one of the foremost authorities on the design world’s most important artifacts.
FOR THOSE WHO APPRECIATE THE WRITTEN WORD
In a quiet pocket of central Tokyo, Jimbōchō stands as the city’s literary stronghold. Often referred to as “Book Town,” the district is home to more than 400 bookshops, many of them secondhand, specialising in everything from 19th-century woodblock prints to out-of-print philosophy texts, pulp manga, and vintage erotica. The area’s identity took shape in the 1880s, when students from nearby universities began buying and reselling textbooks—an informal system that blossomed into a full-fledged book economy. Remarkably, the neighbourhood escaped the devastation of the Second World War and re-emerged as a centre for publishing, with companies like Shūeisha and Iwanami setting up shop. Today, Jimbōchō remains a place where time slows down, and the act of browsing becomes its own quiet ritual.
“Tokyo is my favorite city and I always plan for a day in Jimbōchō when I’m lucky enough to visit. My personal HEAVEN, it is an entire district of used bookstores. My greatest find was a copy of Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture.”
“I collect and wear a lot of vintage clothes, but a new ARRIVAL to my closet that I’ve been loving is a perfect merino checkerboard sweater that designer Connor McKnight graciously sent me from his archive. I’m always inspired by Connor’s own personal style and look forward to adding his work to my wardrobe as he creates the best new American classics.”
CONNOR MCKNIGHT’S NEW AMERICAN CLASSICS
Connor McKnight is a designer concerned with the quiet moments. Based in New York, his work is rooted in the belief that our most telling experiences often unfold not in dramatic peaks, but in the steady rhythm of daily life. Since founding his label in 2020, McKnight has approached design as an ongoing dialogue with personal memory, crafting garments that reflect what he’s actually wearing—pieces intended to be lived in, not just looked at. Drawing from global references in workwear and tailoring, his collections reinterpret functional silhouettes with a precise, contemporary lens. Central to his practice is a commitment to longevity: clothes that hold their form, their meaning, and their place in the wardrobe over time.
THE LEGACY OF THE ICONIC FRAN HOSKEN
Fran Hosken was a woman who refused to be confined by a single discipline. Trained as an architect at Harvard under the guidance of Bauhaus figures such as Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, she began her career designing modular furniture rooted in the modernist ideals of functionality and accessibility. Though her design firm, Hosken, Inc., met an early end, she quickly redirected her focus—first to architectural photography, then to urban planning, and eventually to feminist activism. In 1975, she founded the Women’s International Network, a pre-digital platform for sharing information and building solidarity among women across the globe. She wrote and published the WIN newsletter from her home in Boston well into her eighties. Hosken’s career was not linear, but deliberately expansive. Whether writing about cities, advocating for women’s rights in the Global South, or painting later in life, she remained engaged, questioning, and unsentimental—a modernist in the truest sense.
“I have bought little to no jewelry as an adult and rely mostly on gold hoop earrings that my grandma passed down to me. That changed recently after learning about the jewelry of Fran Hosken, one of the FIRST women to attend the Harvard School of Design, from my friend and incredibly stylish design historian Charlotte von Hardenburgh. In addition to designing and producing flat-pack furniture that was deemed “Good Design” by the Museum of Modern Art, Hosken created spiral metal jewelry inspired by bearing springs. Following her industrial design career, Hosken went on to become an activist for women’s health care. Today, von Hardenburgh is the pre-eminent Hosken scholar and was my personal stylist as I picked out my own two Hosken bracelets while visiting the archive and showroom.”
“The beautiful and rational Cranbrook campus in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan was designed by the wildly talented Saarinens: Eliel, Loja, Eero, and Pipsan; a Finnish family who moved to the US and drove the development of modern architecture and design in their adopted country. A true gesamkunstwerk, this is the place where Florence Knoll grew up and first studied architecture; where the designers Ray and Charles Eames first met and collaborated with sculptor Harry Bertoia and Eero Saarinen; and that continues to foster visionary talent today like Nick Cave, Ania Jaworska, and Jonathan Muecke. It is my FAVORITE “design destination” on earth. The Cranbrook Art Museum is led by another Cranbrook alum and design world great Andrew Blauvelt. My colleagues Alexa Hagen, Sarah Wood, and I have been honored to collaborate on the forthcoming exhibition Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US with Andrew and curatorial fellow Bridget Bartal. The show opens June 14, 2025, another reason (in addition to the lake) to get to Michigan this summer.”
THE SHOW GIVING MODERNISM ITS MISSING CREDITS
Mid-century modernism is often remembered in clean lines and iconic names—but Eventually Everything Connects, on view at Cranbrook Art Museum, pushes the narrative further. Taking its title from Charles Eames’ now-famous observation, this exhibition traces the deeply entangled relationships between people, ideas, and objects across a defining moment in American design history. Featuring over 200 works by nearly 100 artists, architects, and designers, it spotlights Cranbrook’s influential legacy while expanding the lens to include the overlooked contributions of women, queer creatives, and designers of color. From Florence Knoll to Ruth Adler Schnee, Joel Robinson to Olga Lee, the exhibition reframes modernism not as a monolith, but as a movement shaped by multiplicity. Accompanied by a 464-page tome published by Phaidon, the project is both archival and future-facing—a reminder that what we make, and who we credit, always matters.
A HUMBLE RESTAURANT THAT CHANGED HOW WE EAT
Tucked off a quiet street in Bra, Osteria del Boccondivino is where the Slow Food movement was born. In 1986, founder Carlo Petrini met here with a small group to push back against fast food culture and champion local, seasonal, and fair ingredients. The restaurant still follows that philosophy closely. The menu is simple and regional—Bra’s raw sausage, “40-yolk” tajarin, Carmagnola rabbit, and bonet for dessert. Ingredients are often sourced through the I Tarocchi Cooperative, which works with Slow Food presidia to support small producers. In summer, meals are served in the inner courtyard, shaded by wisteria. The name, boccondivino, translates loosely as a divine bite, or a bite of wine. Both are accurate.