The Alpha Awards, presented by The Alpha Workshops, the country’s only nonprofit providing HIV-positive individuals with training and employment in the decorative arts, will honor this year’s winners in a May 12 celebration. Held at the New York City’s Broad Street Ballroom, this year the awards will recognize Barry Head, Ellen Levy, Elinor Polansky and Barbara Small, founding Alpha Workshops board members, with the honors presented by Steve Symonds, Pershing Square Capital Management and Alpha Workshops board member, and Chip Brian and Michael Daddio of Best & Company, with their honors presented by Wendy Goodman, design editor of New York magazine. The awards will also launch The Alpha Workshops Scholarship Fund, which honors interior designer Jamie Drake.

A collection of three hand blown, gold flecked Murano bowls are up for bid.

An online auction—as well as live and silent auctions to be held at the event—featuring treasures like furnishings from the Stephanie Odegard Collection and Enrique Garcel, decorative objects from Marvin Alexander and Fortuny, and rugs from Edward Fields, Fort Street Studio and Matthew Patrick Smyth, will help support the nonprofit's goal of raising $300,000. Some of the expected attendees include interior designers Jamie Drake, Celerie Kemble, Bruce Bierman and Jay Jeffers, lighting designer Nathan Orsman, gallery owner William Secord, and others.

Hand-carved marble Kohinoor Table and gild glazed porcelain table lamps are up for auction.

“All of our Alpha Awards honorees have given so much time and generosity to The Alpha Workshops,” says Founder and Executive Director Kenneth Wampler. “It has been incredibly rewarding to work with such talented individuals over the past two decades and we are ever so thankful for their contributions. We look forward to another twenty years of changing lives through decorative arts education.”

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, The Alpha Workshops was founded in 1995 and is comprised of The Alpha Workshops Studio School (AWSS) and Alpha Workshops Studios, an award-winning professional design and decorative arts atelier staffed solely by AWSS graduates. The Alpha artist staff creates hand-painted wallpapers, custom-built and hand-finished case goods and hand-fabricated lamps and accessories. Check out the auction online.