Shaker-Inspired Furniture by Italian Studio FormaFantasma

When the West Chelsea gallery Friedman Benda put on a show of British designer Faye Toogood this past winter, it painted its walls and podiums a sandy yellow and applied “cave drawing” decals, as if to suggest that Toogood’s furniture — blocky, hand-chiseled works — had been exhumed from an archeological dig. For Misha Kahn, a designer who collages together materials like fiberglass and ceramics, the gallery covered its walls in fluffy white wool, which offered a soft, textured counterpoint to Kahn’s glossy pieces. But when it came to staging “Formation,” the first solo show of Italian design practice FormaFantasma in the U.S., the gallery put theatrics aside. Instead, the curators…