Design is Undead — How the Seance Aesthetic Came to Possess Our Homes

There is a great and growing interest in not-new furniture (as well as a zillion excellent sellers finding the best things and dusting them off for modern relevance). But there is another way to talk about reviving dead design — and that is reviving the dead through design. Today’s subject and current obsession by For Scale's David Michon: the SÉANCE AESTHETIC.
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Meet the 1980s-Era Designer Whose Chair Went Semi-Viral During the Pandemic

The impulse to reassess design from the late '70s and '80s — and to place it in a current context — has clearly been in the air, most notably at last year’s Return to Downtown group show from Superhouse and Magen H Gallery and at the more recent Blurring the Timeline show, also at Superhouse. Standout pieces from both exhibitions included chairs by a designer whose name you might not be familiar with: Howard Meister, part of the core group of designer-artists at Art et Industrie, a now-legendary New York gallery that opened in 1977 and closed in the late '90s. Here, we caught up with Meister from his home in Western Massachusetts. In a roving, entertaining interview, he shared with us how he got his largely accidental start and went from being “a dope in a suit” to an artist, his belief in the importance of craft and his desire not to be “survived by crap."
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On the Great Pine Resurgence of 2023 — AKA For Pine Nuts Who Love It Knotty

Have you been reading For Scale? It's the new furniture-focused Substack that seemingly everyone is already turned onto, and we get it — it's an absolute joy to read, with favorite topics so far including but not being limited to: plastic, children's furniture, the "twink aesthetic," and Psycho-Decorating 101 (a favorite Sight Unseen tome). So, we did what any editor with half a brain would do: We hired For Scale's excellent and very fun writer, David Michon, to pen what we hope is the first of many columns! Today's subject: a paean to PINE.
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Revisiting the Poetic Work of Japanese-Born, Italian-By-Choice Designer Kazuhide Takahama

If there's one chair most design enthusiasts know by Kazuhide Takahama, it’s the Tulu. You’re likely familiar with its sled base composed of slim, welded-steel rods and its square upholstered backrest that seems to be floating independently in the center of a metal frame. It’s popping up more and more — from eBay listings to frescoed palazzos in Italy — and it’s no wonder. It’s a beautiful piece — subtle, minimal, and formally innovative for the late 1960s when it was designed — but despite the Tulu’s popularity, the rest of Takahama’s work is not nearly as recognizable. But as the casual collector becomes more and more aware of his work, we’ve decided it’s high time to take a deep dive into the work of Kazuhide Takahama.
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Body Parts Are Trending in Design, and Our New Book Proves It

In the last five years — somewhere between the giant nose vase German duo BNAG produced for Felix Burrichter's dollhouse exhibition at Friedman Benda and the butt bookends Marco Braunschweiler made for Marta's In Support of Books — body parts in design became a full-fledged thing. That's why we weren't a bit surprised when we noticed, visiting the 16 homes we photographed for How to Live With Objects, that body parts were popping up seemingly everywhere — from the Nicola L eye lamp in Yoram Heller and Eleanor Wells's living room, to the giant hand sitting at the base of Jonathan Pessin's object-filled bookshelves, to the nose relief on display in the London home of Sadie Perry.
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This Is One 1980s Trend Revival We Didn’t See Coming

We're not sure if it's a comfort thing or a style thing, and we're not sure if it reminds anyone else of the La-Z-Boys of yore, but if you've been watching carefully the past few years, you may have noticed that furniture designers — most particularly when it comes to beds and sofas — have been embracing a very specific aesthetic with roots in the 1980s.
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Justin Morin’s Silk Draperies Reference Pop Culture and Natural Phenomena in Equal Measure

Justin Morin’s printed silk installations take many forms — some unfurl dramatically against an expansive gallery wall; others are cinched and pleated like couture; still others are knotted, tied, looped, bunched, gathered, or, simply hang listlessly like a flag. Morin’s specific visual vocabulary, developed over the course of a decade since he created his first printed silk work in 2011, proposes that anything and everything in our information-dense and visually overwrought world can be unraveled and represented in sensual, gradient silk.
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10 Low-Slung Floor Chairs That Epitomize Our Current Obsession With Coziness

When it comes to seating — in the realm of Instagram influencers, at least — 2020 was the year of the Togo, the iconic beanbag-y modular sofa designed in the '70s by Michel Ducaroy for Ligne Roset. But it wasn't the only comfy floor seat we found ourselves drawn to last year; we'd been tracking the typology since before COVID hit, and this week, as winter (and the maelstrom on the news) keeps us more supine than ever, we thought it was as good a time as ever to share our picks with you.
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All the Vintage Furniture Reissues Happening Right Now

Have you ever seen a piece of vintage furniture in a magazine — or in the Instagram Stories of a particularly stylish friend or influencer— and thought: “HOLY SHIT, I HAVE TO HAVE THAT NOW”? Of course you have. We all have. It’s no wonder that furniture companies have been furiously plumbing their own archives for the next (old) big thing.
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Think Face Pottery Is a Millennial Thing? Meet the Artist Who’s Been Doing It Since the ’70s

When Jill and I posted pictures of our favorite books on Instagram last week, mine featured one of my favorite objects in my living room, shown above: A pot, used by me as a planter, that features two hand-painted, color-blocked pastel faces. I bought it on eBay for $10 a year and a half ago. I don't remember how I found it. I had no idea, at the time, who the maker was, only that her name was Victoria Crowell and I assumed she was an obscure local artisan who made the pot in the '80s. I was mostly correct.
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