Ceramist Danny Kaplan Trades Brooklyn Rents for a Berkshire Mill

Ceramist and designer Danny Kaplan has opened a production studio in a converted textile mill in North Adams, Massachusetts, after a search for larger Brooklyn quarters foundered on steep rents and costly buildouts.

The move, completed last year, followed a chance revelation. Kaplan's longtime production manager, Val Shamma, told him he and his wife were relocating to North Adams. "It occurred to us that maybe the solution was actually to follow him," Kaplan said. "Once the pieces started to fall into place, it made perfect sense."

Kaplan, a New York City–based designer best known for his sculptural lighting and furniture, has equipped the ground-floor warehouse with an upgraded electrical system supporting three kilns, plus a glass garage door that admits natural light. He now does much of his ceramic casting and larger sculptural work there. His original Bushwick workshop continues to produce lamps and other hand-built pieces.

Why North Adams?

The Berkshire city fits a familiar pattern: a once-bustling mill town that declined in the mid-20th century before institutions such as MASS MoCA restored its cultural standing. Former industrial spaces were available and affordable where Brooklyn was neither. Kaplan landed on the roomy warehouse without the buildout burden that had stalled his New York search.

What is the studio producing now?

This past summer, the Berkshire facility churned out slim, colorful tiles for Kaplan's Delf collection, a collaboration with Vince Patti's furniture firm Lesser Miracle. The name, Dutch for canal or ditch, refers to the grooved wood that holds each tile.

The partnership dates to 2024, when the pair built a custom bed for Kaplan himself, featuring a wraparound headboard and a border of inset tiles. This fall, Delf II extends that design language to a console, a coffee table, a desk and a nightstand, all in oiled oak with octagonal tops. Kaplan produces the glazed ceramic components in Massachusetts; they then travel to Lesser Miracle's Brooklyn woodshop, where Patti oversees final assembly.

What does the move change for the work?

The honest answer: capacity now, ambition later. Kaplan concedes the space has increased his production capability, but he frames the real payoff as room for expansive thinking. In time, he wants to host visiting artists seeking a scene change and to knit the studio into the North Adams community.

"It's very serene," he said. "And ceramic people love community."

Neither the residency plan nor the community integration has a stated timeline. What is concrete is the production line: three kilns running, Delf II shipping this fall, and a designer who solved a Brooklyn rent problem by following his production manager to a mill town two states north.