Illuminated Connections: Inside Our Living Room at ASID GATHER: Catalyst
Designed by Crystorama TasteMaker Antonio DeLoatch, our booth traded the expected for a living room: moss velvet, three glowing Esme chandeliers and two days of the best conversations in Dallas.
Every great room starts with a point of view. For ASID GATHER: Catalyst, the American Society of Interior Designers' national leadership conference, held September 16–18 at Dallas Market Center, ours came from Crystorama TasteMaker Antonio DeLoatch.
Antonio led the creative direction for our booth, Illuminated Connections, and his vision was clear from the start: not a display to admire from the aisle, but a room designers would want to step into, settle into and stay.
The Concept: A Room, Not A Booth
Crystorama Tastemaker Antonio DeLoatch led the creative direction for Illuminated Connections with a clear idea from the start: create something designers wouldn’t simply admire from the aisle, but a richly layered, lived-in environment they would want to step into, settle into, and stay.
His inspiration? The best seat at a dinner party—the place where good light, beautiful materials, and thoughtful design invite conversation to linger.
And at the center of it all were the Esme chandeliers.
“I wanted designers to walk in and forget they were at a conference. Sit down, stay a while, and feel what good light does to a room.” — Antonio DeLoatch, Crystorama TasteMaker
The Star of the Space: Esme
Overhead, three Esme chandeliers transformed the booth with a modern interpretation of the classic Sputnik. Aged-brass rods radiated outward to hand-blown glass petals, creating fixtures that felt sculptural, organic, and playful.
Antonio suspended three Esmes at staggered heights in fresh green, soft milky white, and smoky mauve glass. Each fixture held its own while becoming part of a larger composition overhead.
That duality is part of what makes Esme so compelling. Switched off, it reads as sculpture—bold, dimensional, and unexpected. Illuminated, the glass petals take on a warm glow, softening the space and demonstrating how colored glass can establish a room’s mood before anything else is added.
STEAL THE LOOK
Hang statement lighting in odd numbers and stagger the drops to encourage the eye to travel. Keep one metal finish consistent—aged brass in this case—and allow variations in glass color to bring personality and movement to the composition.
Different hues. One family. One cohesive statement.
Where Everyone Gathered
To ground the scale of the open-air booth, Antonio selected the oversized Leandro coffee table from Made Goods. Its generous proportions created a strong visual anchor beneath the trio of Esme chandeliers while giving guests a natural place to gather and experience Crystorama up close.
Rather than treating the table as simply another furnishing, it became a tactile design moment.
A long, low botanical arrangement by The Botanical Mix stretched through the center with white allium, pale green hydrangea, peonies, and sculptural driftwood. The arrangement brought the biophilic thread of the week directly into the vignette.
A vintage orange Murano glass bowl added an unexpected pop of color, while an oversized woven tray ( inspired add hyperlink to your woven collection) invited guests to touch and explore Crystorama’s samples, textures, and materials. The 2026 Make Life Bright catalog was styled alongside them like the coffee-table book it was designed to be.
And one small detail proved nearly irresistible: the crystal flower ( hyper link collection) . Nearly everyone who sat down found themselves intriguing and couldn’t help admiring it and engaging with it.
That interaction captured the spirit of the entire space: design not simply to be looked at, but to be experienced.
Layered for Living
Around those anchoring pieces, he built richness through texture and contrast. Moss velvet, printed hemp textiles, a substantial bookcase, tropical foliage, collected accessories, and a softly textured rug gave the lighting a world to illuminate.
Together, these layers softened the scale of the trade-show environment and encouraged designers to imagine beyond the fixture itself.
What kind of room could you build around an Esme chandelier?
The Partners Behind the Space
A space this layered is never created alone. Illuminated Connections came together through a group of design partners who helped furnish, dress, and bring Antonio’s vision to life:
MC Studio — furnishings from the to-the-trade showroom at Dallas Market Center’s Interior Home + Design Center
Made Goods — Leandro coffee table and accessories
SunThreads — printed hemp textiles from the Antonio DeLoatch collection
The Botanical Mix — botanicals by Shane Friesenhahn’s Dallas floral atelier
Unique Loom — textured area rug
The Community Behind The Conversation
What ultimately brought Illuminated Connections to life was the community that filled it.
Over two days, Crystorama welcomed ASID chapter leaders, firm principals, educators, emerging designers, longtime friends, and new faces. Guests settled in. Conversations lingered. Materials moved from hand to hand.
The booth became exactly what Crystorama envisioned: a place where design opened the door to connection.
Illuminating the Possibilities
GATHER: Catalyst is centered on growth, leadership, and exchange. Rather than compete with that energy, Illuminated Connections created a place to experience it differently.
The installation also carried forward a conversation from Dallas Design Week, where Crystorama and Sherwin-Williams explored the relationship between light, color, and the way we experience a space.
