Celestial giants dot our night sky, impossibly heavy and yet seemingly weightless as they continue on their cosmic paths. Building on that sense of wonder, TF Design, founded by designer Tina Frey, unveiled the Orbit Collection in Bronze at Design Miami this year, translating celestial movement into sculptural form and grounding cosmic scale in tactile human-made objects.
Originally released in colored resin at 3daysofdesign in 2023, this new take is inspired by balance and interconnectedness. Frey designed these pieces to be polished by hand, highlighting the organic surface of the cast. The fresh release was featured as part of Design Miami’s 2.0 Exhibit – a museum-quality showcase of eight international design studios – while also commemorating the broader fair’s 20th anniversary.
Like stars orbiting through space, Design Miami attendees navigated around these sculptural forms, their mirrored surfaces offering moments of reflection both literal and figurative. Positioned within a broader dialogue on innovation, collectible design, and the convergence of art and function, the collection invited close inspection and contemplation.
Arcs of reflective bronze meet in space, supported by a stabilizing plane that encircles the center. Fleeting glints of light recall the speckled expanses of the night sky, while generously scaled forms ripple with a steady, warping reflection – intentional, immersive, and quietly mesmerizing. Here, light, shadow, and space blur expectations, prompting introspection through form as much as function.
“The evolution of resin to bronze ushers in a new era of the Orbit Collection and our vision of contemporary craftsmanship,” says Tina Frey. “This is what The Lab is about – a consistent transformation and evolution of materials and form through the exploration of the roles they play in our day-to-day lives.”
Each piece begins as a hand-sculpted clay model shaped by Frey, then cast in bronze and meticulously polished by hand. This process preserves subtle striations and organic irregularities from the original clay, resulting in an intentionally imperfect surface that plays with light, shadow, and reflection. In bronze, the collection’s soft contours and harmonious curves gain architectural weight, transforming the surrounding environment through a heightened sensory presence.
Together, the trio conveys a quiet sense of planetary strength, as though assembled from the building blocks of the cosmos itself. Orbit 1 functions as a small table, while Orbit 2 and Orbit 3 serve as medium and large chairs, yet each remains open to interpretation – equally at home as sculptural object or functional furniture. The surfaces reshape our reflections to their own hand-built logic, prompting a meditation on perception, scale, and humanity.
The unmistakably warm glow allows the pieces to luxuriate in their space. The pieces exemplified the Design Miami 2025 theme, Make. Believe., inviting energy into the design sphere. Imaginative design is essential to longevity, especially now, paving the way for new paradigms in the industry.
Crafted in collaboration with a Cape Town–based foundry managed through Southern Guild, the bronze Orbits embody both global craftsmanship and Frey’s deeply personal sculptural language – anchoring TF Design’s expanding material vocabulary while reaffirming its commitment to thoughtful, experimental design.
To learn more about the Orbit Collection in Bronze by Tina Frey of TF Design, visit tf.design.
Photography courtesy of TF Design.
