Bower x West Elm

Bower Made a Collection for West Elm, And It’s Really Good

If you're a frequent reader of this site, you've probably heard us bemoan the lack of cool, but affordable, American furniture more times than you can count. Which is precisely why collaborations like this one — which pairs Bower's signature, mixed-material aesthetic with West Elm's years of accumulated knowledge — are so important.
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In This Designer’s Hands, Recycled Leather Becomes Something Undeniably Cool

Continuing with a self-produced material he calls Structural Skin, Madrid-based designer Jorge Penadés has turned his exploration of recycled leather waste into a sleek collection of mirrors and table lamps, on display earlier this month at the Rossana Orlandi gallery in Milan. Penadés gets the leather offcuts for his pieces from Hermès, which means the color palettes become a kind of artistic constraint — and yet, the shredded leather, combined with resin to create a reconstituted material, is undeniably cool, resembling marble or a particularly colorful particleboard.
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De Allegri and Fogale

A Mystical Marble Interior in the Heart of Milan

The last time we saw a site-specific installation by London-based duo De Allegri and Fogale, you literally couldn't miss it — their tinted acrylic tunnel stretched across a bridge at the V&A, smack in the middle of the London Design Festival. But last week, the duo launched a project in Milan so small and so hidden that you had to know exactly what you were looking for in order to find it. But perhaps that was the point: Called Mystical Solace, the installation was meant as a commentary on the quiet, contemplative spaces that have become so popular during events like these.
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The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 4

On the Salone fairgrounds, we found a sleeper hit in the Italian metal processing company De Castelli, who began collaborating with designers back in 2010. We especially love the snaking, patinated Scribble tables by Francesca Lanzavecchia above, as well as the painterly folding screens by Alessandra Baldereschi.
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New Apparatus collection

The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 3

We don't mean to be biased towards our American compatriots for the third day in a row, but the new Apparatus collection is, in a word, stunning — translucent, cast-resin tables topped by ash slabs lacquered in a high-gloss, rust-colored hue; patinated brass lamps with bases sheathed in a buttery calf suede; and slip-cast porcelain pendants punctuated by dangling brass spheres.
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The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 2

At Rossana Orlandi, we spied this collection of items by students in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects program. The school partnered with West Supply, a Chicago-based foundry and fabricator to develop a selection of objects in glass and bronze.
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The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 1

Sight Unseen is on the ground at the Milan Furniture Fair this week and we’ll be bringing you loads and loads of coverage next week! But until our rounds here are done, we’ll be featuring quick hits from some of our favorite things that caught our eye. First up: We had to cross an ocean to find a collection designed in our own backyard, Matter-Made's gorgeous new line.
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Brian Rideout Makes Art For Design Lovers

Brian Rideout's American Collection Paintings are meant to transform the interiors images he finds in old decorating books and magazines into archival records of time and place: “A contemporary reference to the Flemish collection paintings of the early 17th century, American Collection Paintings … aims to reorient these glossy commercial examples into historical documents,” he says.
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Your Search for the Perfect Coffee Table Ends Here

What is it with designers named Jonathan? Our preoccupation with the Perth, Australia–born, Los Angeles–based Jonathan Zawada in some ways reminds us of the way we feel about Jonathan Muecke — they don't release new work all that often, but when they do, we seem to want every single piece of it. In Zawada's case, that spartan output may be a professional necessity — Zawada spends much of his time creating digital art, album covers, and advertisements in his more commercial practice. But this week finally saw the official expansion of Zawada's Affordances line, which we first covered way back in 2013.
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We’re Taking the Day Off to Support Women’s Rights

Today, across the world, women — when they can — are staying home from their jobs, refusing to spend money, wearing red, or heading out to marches and rallies as part of A Day Without A Woman, a 24-hour strike to support equality, justice, and human rights for women. Sight Unseen, of course, is run by women, and so in lieu of content, we're posting a simple statement of support. We'll see you in the streets.
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Pink Travertine and Rusty Velvet in a Coolly Minimalist Cape Town Boutique

On a recent family trip to Cape Town, I determined to go to the best restaurant in the city, to revisit to my favorite beach hangout (Beta), and, thanks to a hot tip from a friend's Instagram, to pop in on a store that can only be described as #sosightunseen. The eponymous boutique of fashion designer Margot Molyneux, the shop opened at the end of last year, showcasing the brand's minimal-chic designs — in a color palette of peach, green, rust, white, and black — with a store design by Molyneux's husband to match.
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These $50 Posters Are a Serious Score

This week marked the launch of yet another great inexpensive poster series on yet another great art site, created by the multi-disciplinary Danish design studio Atelier CPH. The images were inspired by 70s colors and abstracted faces, and they look like something you'd be psyched to unearth at an antique mall for five times the price. These are only 49 to 89 Euros each, and they come with the cache of a creative duo whose clients include Kinfolk, Ferm Living, and Norm Architects.
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