03.17.21

Interiors

This Cannabis Dispensary in Toronto Is Practically a Celine Store

We've arrived in the era of cannabis dispensaries with serious design pedigree, from Serra's Commune-designed L.A. branch to StudioAC's Toronto store for Edition. This week we got images of the newest entrant into the space: the Alchemy cannabis flagship in Toronto, by Paolo Ferrari studio, which has truly left the realm of "oh that's chic for a dispensary" and entered the realm of "might as well be a Celine store."
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07.11.19

Up and Coming

This Toronto Design Studio Finds Inspiration in the Canadian Wilderness

The Toronto-based design group Objects & Ideas works within a conceptual-meets-functional framework, and they talk about their work as an active excavation of the voice and soul of objects. "What we do is much closer to art than to mass production," says co-founder Bob Dodd. "Like everyone, we have to make money, and we have to make products people want to possess and cherish, but our furniture is definitely a vehicle to express our ideas and concepts. The best products have a soul and a presence."
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04.01.15

Up and Coming

Toronto’s MSDS Studio

MSDS — the small, Toronto-based studio of Jonathan Sabine and Jessica Nakanishi, who have been working together since 2011 — is a perfect blend of its founders Scandinavian and Japanese sensibilities: aesthetics outlined by minimal, well-considered forms and explorations into tactile, human materials. The duo have been on our radar since spotting (and still very much coveting!) their Pleated Series of terracotta planters and vases, which they designed for the launch of Umbra Shift at ICFF last May. So nothing could’ve tamed our delight when we came across the duo’s solo stand in and amongst the Nordic brands at the Stockholm Furniture Fair last month.
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08.12.13

8 Things

Michael Klein of Toronto’s MKG127 Gallery

According to Canadian curator Michael Klein, when people think of art in Vancouver, they think of photo-conceptualism. When they think of Winnipeg, it’s the Royal Art Lodge, the drawing collective founded in 1996 that launched the careers of talents like Marcel Dzama. But Toronto, on the other hand, resists such classifications — it’s one of the most diverse cities in the world, says Klein, and the same can be said for its art scene. So why do we automatically associate the city with the kind of clever, minimalist conceptual work that Klein shows at MKG127, the gallery he founded there in 2007? Blame the artist Micah Lexier — we covered his amazing A to B installation on Sight Unseen in 2010, and then proceeded to fall down the MKG rabbit hole, marveling both at the subtle, obsessive-compulsive thrills that characterize many of the works shown there and at the weird cohesiveness of Klein’s vision.
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08.02.10

Excerpt: Exhibition

A to B at Toronto’s MKG127

There’s no object too mundane to catch Micah Lexier’s eye. He collects scraps torn off cardboard boxes, envelopes and papers lying in the street, even bathroom-cleaning checklists at restaurants — anything that deals with the passage of time or with systems, the driving forces behind his own work as an artist. “I love garbage day,” he says. “It’s hard for me to walk home and not find things. I keep a knife in my pocket just in case.” It’s not that Lexier necessarily uses these found items in his own pieces, like the 1994 series in which he photographed 75 men from age 1 to 75, all of whom were named David. They’re just another part of his lifelong fascination with the aesthetics of order, a way of seeing the world that was mapped out perfectly in the show he recently curated at Toronto’s MKG127 gallery, where curiosities from his collection sat alongside sequentially themed works by other artists.
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02.17.24

Saturday Selects

Week of February 12, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Judd-esque wall units, a new gorgeously appointed showroom for textile company Zak + Fox, and some hits from Zona Maco (with more to come this week!)
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10.04.23

Sighted

Each Rug in the Latest Collection from Cc-Tapis Looks Like a Portal to Somewhere Else

Made of hand-knotted Himalayan wool at the cc-tapis atelier in Nepal, the Memento collection by Yabu Pushelberg features a trio of undyed, tone-on-tone variations in off-kilter geometries. There are arches that could be doorways; squares, trapezoids, and circles that could be windows; portals to somewhere else. Or not. These designs are not so much figurative as suggestive. Like a fleeting memory that takes you out of the present but can’t exactly put you in the past.
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09.06.23

Sight Unseen Collection

Objects & Ideas Are Making Sculptural, Relational Objects in the Canadian Wilderness

Since we last checked in with Di Tao and Bob Dodd of Toronto’s Objects & Ideas, their furniture designs have moved increasingly towards functional sculpture. “We’ve always thought that every piece we make needs to have a strong character and a strong expression — that has never changed. But the way we express our ideas has evolved,” says Tao. The latest pieces are visually alluring objects that have a use, of course: The enveloping Beaver Tail chair offers a seat, the curving Ascend floor lamp provides illumination. But these works also — and just as importantly — are relational, changing the space that they, and you, occupy.
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07.22.23

Saturday Selects

Week of July 17, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a Finnish candy–inspired handbag from Marimekko, a secret garden–inspired glassware collection by Sophie Lou Jacobsen, and a Paris apartment whose palette was inspired by a Tracey Emin painting.
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10.23.22

Saturday Selects

Week of October 17, 2022

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an afternoon tea tray cast using blocks found on Mexico City streets, conveyor-belt chairs, "moldy marble," and a heavenly collaboration between Lalique and James Turrell.
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10.19.22

Sighted

Studio Paolo Ferrari Changes Perspective for Latest ‘Editions’ Furniture Series

In 2016, the Toronto-based interior designer Paolo Ferrari released his studio's first edition of collectible furniture, intending to evolve and expand upon its forms over time. Last week, at his New York gallery Colony, he unveiled the collection's latest iteration — Editions 04 — which was meant to debut in 2019 but was postponed due to the pandemic. This extra time proved beneficial for Ferrari, who was able to pause, contemplate, and develop his designs even further than previously anticipated. It also provided another fortuitous opportunity: to photograph them against the dramatic industrial backdrop of Skylight Steelworks, a former factory and 1960s office space on 750 acres outside of Toronto in the one-time steel town of Hamilton, which has recently become home to a new generation of creatives and artists.
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