A beguiling assortment of avant-garde furniture rests within the walls of an unassuming Mediterranean-style home located around the corner from the bustling strip of Fifth Avenue South. The collection belongs to Mike and Kelly Mahigel, who opened PDA Gallery—focusing on avant-garde and vintage design—in the Naples Design District last November. Their home functions as an extension of their gallery. “Here,” says Mike, “we can show how we live with art.”
That art is appropriately labeled “collectible design,” a term coined about 20 years ago to describe furnishings, products, and objects characterized by artistic expression and limited production. Often more form than function, the items—think vases, chairs, sofas, console tables, and benches—depart from convention and expectation in their realization.
Mike’s enthusiasm is fervent for the growing collectible design trend. The multisyllabic names of the international artists—many from Japan, Italy, and Northern Europe—and their works roll off his tongue with ease. He and Kelly have hundreds of pieces in their collection, many from the 1970s and 1980s—an era of focus for the couple and one that Mike describes as “ostentatious minimalism.” For examples, he points to the Nirvana chair by Shigeru Uchida from 1981, with a steel-squiggle base, an upholstered seat, and a solid gold tube armrest (one of four known vintage examples) that tucks under an Eero Saarinen pedestal table in their dining area.
Every room in their home plays host to collectible design items—from the 1970s to present day. In the primary bedroom, a red lips–shaped sofa by Studio 65 (Italy, 1970) is placed behind a cork coffee table by Jader Almeida (Brazil, 2013). The living room in their home showcases colorful matching Ettore Sottsass cabinets (Italy, 1985), a wood slat bench by Carl Fredrik Svenstedt made for Issey Miyake (United States, France, Japan; 2009), a Gastone Rinaldi sofa (Italy, 1970) that Mike explains was a piece “Kelly fell in love with and had to have,” and chrome sofa chairs (Japan, 1982) and lamps (Japan, 1972) by Shiro Kuramata.
Mike has never completed any formal art or design studies and jokes that his early furniture transactions involved flipping his parents’ Broyhill furniture on Craigslist for beer money. He spent 10 years in asset management, staying in his hometown of Minneapolis. When he met Kelly, also born and raised in the City of Lakes, she had done stints in advertising and accounting and was “into real estate.” She reveals she has always been obsessed with art and interior design. Together Mike and Kelly bought and sold homes and further honed their personal design style while cohabitating and having to choose furniture they both liked and could live with.
It was around this time that Mike realized that design for him was “very much a drug.” Although he dislikes that analogy, his interest in collectible design became a gateway to a passionate livelihood. He traveled the world, filling containers with unique and rare pieces that he shipped to and stored in a 6,600-square-foot warehouse space near his home. As his collection grew, he began networking with dealers, buying and selling the unique pieces. He says the collectible design market exploded during COVID. He was hooked.
For the past 10 years, the couple had been visiting Naples. They decided to make a full-time move south in July 2023 with their two boys, Arlo (5) and Ezra (3), and their design collection. Their flourishing resale business helped them realize an opportunity to share their carefully curated collection here—in the form of a gallery.
“We need to see more of this art in Florida,” says Kelly, a place that is “ready for some color and fun.” The couple, admittedly, are “throwing people in the deep end,” with their gallery and infectious exuberance for collectible design.
While they buy what they like, Mike says they also look for “things we think will age well.”
The pieces—being vintage or limited in production—offer an attractive green aspect and are ultimately “liquid assets,” says Mike. The couple continue to travel the world looking for treasures and are avid readers of books on contemporary designers. Already they are noticing influences from past and current designers upon younger artists; they enjoy the process of anticipating what will become more valuable over time.
Best of all, the Mahigel family get to live with what they find—even if it’s only for a short while, epitomizing living the dream.
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