It’s official: Sight Unseen’s first printed edition, Paper View, is finally out, and we’ve held it in our very own hands. Tonight, we’ll celebrate with Karlsson’s Vodka, whose Unfiltered initiative also officially launches with the debut of our project. But today, we’ve prepared something special for you in honor of the occasion, a series of outtakes from one of the articles published in Paper View: A catalog of Max Lamb’s personal collections, which first ran on Sight Unseen early last year. While the vast majority of the 24 stories in the printed edition are brand new, and won’t be found anywhere else but in its pages, we couldn’t resist including Lamb’s Inventory, which seemed to perfectly encapsulate what we’re all about at Sight Unseen — personal photos of things normally off limits to the general public, depicting not just a series of hoarded objects but a veritable roadmap to Lamb’s design practice. “It’s often the physicality or materiality of these objects that inspires me to try my hand at working with a particular material, or to develop a version of the process used to shape it,” he said in the original interview. For this web excerpt, Lamb dug out five additional images for us and offered quick insights into their contents. Check out his explanations below, then follow the link at the bottom to purchase a copy of Paper View.

1. BALLS (top)
“Bouncy balls, squash balls, concrete balls, papier-mâché balls: My collection of balls began in 2006 when I became fascinated by a polyhedron known as the cuboctahedron, which represents the hexagonal lattice structure created when spheres are packed together. Look at oranges stacked in a crate, and trace an imaginary line between each of their centres.”
2. WAX
“Samples of wax sprues used by foundries for lost-wax casting. A perfect example of a project of mine still waiting to be continued…” 3. PLASTIC
“My favourite ‘Milan’ eraser, another from Japan made of rows of cubes — so you’re never short of a corner or edge for intricate erasing — a scale model of a carved polystyrene coffee table, a triangular lump of wax with a circular hole prior to electro-forming in copper, a fine example of a Swiss plumbing T-junction, and two small plugs of recycled plastic made from plastic shopping bags melted in my oven.”
4. CRYSTAL
“My collaboration with J & L Lobmeyr in 2009 resulted in this collection of prototypes in quartz crystal, illustrating our experiments into the three main processes perfected by Lobmeyr and the name of our final collection: Blowing, Cutting and Engraving.”
5. PEWTER
“These small pewter candle holders were cast in my kitchen in a small box filled with children’s play sand, using a process known as lost foam casting. I first sculpted the candle holders from scraps of polystyrene foam and buried them upside down in the sand with just the base of each exposed. I then carefully poured the molten metal in, evaporating the polystyrene and filling the cavity with pewter. These simple experiments were the precursors to my Bronze Poly furniture.”