Shop the Obsessive Collections of 10 New York Creatives, Starting Today

PHOTOS BY PIPPA DRUMMOND, STYLING BY GOZDE EKER

Almost everyone we know who loves design has the collecting gene, and many of them have very specific things they keep saved searches for on eBay or seek out at flea markets and antique stores — myself included. After the umpteenth time I found myself typing “Blenko ice glass” into a search bar, I started to wonder what it would be like to give my object obsessions a purpose, rather than just accumulating more things I can’t fit into my apartment. Thus OCC Market was born.

Opening this evening at the Lower East Side boutique Coming Soon, it’s a shoppable exhibition of obsessive compulsive collections by 10 object enthusiasts in design, food, and fashion; each consists of 8 or more variations on a single archetype, including peppermills (Sabrina De Sousa of Dimes), Mexican candles (Daphne Correll of Correll Correll), and clip-on earrings (Mary Ping of Slow and Steady Wins the Race). Some contributed two, resulting in 12 collections that will be on view and available for purchase this week in Coming Soon’s subterranean project space, the Plyroom. If you’re in New York this evening, stop by the opening from 6pm to 8pm, or just drool over the gorgeous images that photographer Pippa Drummond and stylist Gozde Eker have taken of each collection, pictured below alongside explanations from each participant.

Keren Richter of The White Arrow

OCC_KerenRichter“I’ve always found fake foods fun, be they wooden kid’s toys, plastic display-case sushi, or oversized Oldenburg Burgers. My ‘stone fruit’ collection playfully elevates something kitschy into the realm of the Renaissance still life. The monochromatic pairings explore the subtle color and textural variations between marble and alabaster, while looking pretty, too.”

Daniela Jacobs of ARC Objects

OCC_DanielaJacobs_Glasses“Digestif glasses have come into my world of possessions because I love small-scale home objects – especially glass or ceramic ones. I enjoy using these small vessels for a variety of things, like sipping espresso in the morning, or placing fresh herbs in the kitchen, or actually enjoying a digestif after a meal.” OCC_DanielaJacobs“Basket-themed objects have always attracted me, since I was tiny. This probably has something to do with always seeing them around at home, and with their ubiquity in Mallorca, where I grew up aside from New York. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown not only an aesthetic appreciation for how these materials look, but also for the care put into how they’re made. Something about basket textures are just visually calming.”

Sabrina De Sousa of Dimes

OCC_SabrinaDeSousa“I’ve been collecting peppermills for some time, which led me to design my own last year. I have a bunch more at home which I can’t part with, but the group that I chose for the show are a great representation of the more modernist mills. My favorite is the tall black one with the glass tube (maker unknown) — it’s a great example of Memphis design.”

Fabiana Faria and Helena Barquet of Coming Soon

OCC_ComingSoon “The first time we saw the Travel Wine Cooler — designed in 1980 by Australian designer Richard Carlson for Décor, and in MoMA’s permanent collection — was a recent purchase a friend, Esteban Arboleda, made at a local vintage store while we were staying at his house in Shelter Island. We became obsessed with it and have tried to buy out the market of them to get the best colors. We ended up amassing quite a few of them. Some have a sleeve that you can freeze that keeps the wine cool, but you might just want that particular color. We also found one with the original box, which has an amazing image of the cooler on it.”

Joseph Magliaro of Table of Contents

OCC_JosephMagliaro“Marshall McLuhan believed that outmoded technologies often return as works of art. In that vein, I like to think of the perpetual desk calendar — a staple of pre-digital 20th-century office life obviated by the smartphone and personal computer — as a form ripe for recuperation as an enabler of symbolic rites. The perpetual calendar offers no practical benefit today, functioning instead as an instance of memento mori. The only reason to turn its dials or click its buttons is to remind us that another day has passed, and that to take advantage of our openness to the world, we shouldn’t feel paralyzed by angst, but rather called to action, obligated to engage as many possibilities as we can in the time that remains.”

Mary Ping of Slow and Steady Wins the Race

OCC_MaryPing“We amassed a collection of various vintage clip on earrings sourced from eBay, Etsy, and thrift shops. We went in search of timeless, sculptural, architectural, and unusual takes on the clip-on, whether it be a 1960s Space Age Lucite starburst shape, or modernist silver-tone half-cylindrical bars. Our favorites are the 1950s pea-soup colored earrings with a pivot point connecting 3 blade-shaped pieces of Bakelite that you can wear closed or spread open. We haven’t seen anything quite like them, but we wish we designed them ourselves.”

Matthew Sullivan of AQQ Index

OCC_MatthewSullivan_FacePipe2“These vintage pipes are probably all from the late 19th century or early 20th century, and Dutch. One has really beautifully rendered curls. It’s a strange concept, smoking tobacco out of a head. Apparently the mud of all European urban waters are full of them (the Thames, the Canals of Venice, and Amsterdam).” OCC_MatthewSullivan_BalancingBirds2“Presumably the Egyptian god Horus — overseer of sky, war, and hunting — distilled down to a cheap Chinese trinket. Pretty elegant kitsch though, a real weird time-shrinker (progress?).”

Monica Khemsurov of Sight Unseen

OCC_MonicaKhemsurov“I only purchased my first piece of vintage Blenko ‘ice glass’ — thick, chunky cast-glass objects with a beautiful watery texture — last year, in the form of a half-cylinder bookend I found at a flea market in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. But I quickly became obsessed with collecting it, both because it’s surprisingly inexpensive despite its ridiculous heft, and because transparent and cast-glass furniture and objects have been setting off my inner trend radar for almost two years now.”

Daphne Correll of Correll Correll

Velas de Conchas Candles (not pictured)
“Over the past several years I’ve been working with two silk-producing communities in the Sierra Norte in Oaxaca, and on my way to the villages I often passed another town that’s famous for its craftsmanship, Teotitlán del Valle. Yet I had never realized it was where the elaborate candles you see in churches and museums around Oaxaca City were made — when my friend Ryan gave me one for my birthday a few years ago, I tried to find them at the Oaxacan markets, but never had any luck. I had been to Teotitlán to see weavers and dye artisans before, but for some reason the candles were always overshadowed by the town’s weaving tradition. I finally figured it out recently, and so I paid a visit to Casa Viviana, one of a handful of places there that makes the candles, which are used in the local community as part of a wedding ceremony. I was excited to at last see more of the creativity and beauty that this Zapotec family has been manufacturing for over 60 years.”

Angela Dimayuga, Chef

Snoopy ephemera (not pictured)
“Awhile ago I got really into collecting Snoopy silhouette pillows from 1958, which were originally just a pattern to make at home, which means they’re always handmade. I’ve also always loved Japanese ceramics — especially their old versions of American pop culture icons like Snoopy, Garfield, and Betty Boop — because their proportions were a little different, and maybe a little cuter. They’re well made and feel really special.”