02.02.18

Current Obsession

Set Your eBay Alert for These Amazing, Vintage Kaj Franck Goblets

Our jaws hit the floor in utter surprise and delight last week when, in the process of researching our underrated glassware story, we discovered a glass-related pastime of Finnish designer Kaj Franck's that we had no idea existed (and one that pretty much flies in the face of what we always thought of as his minimal, MCM oeuvre): making elaborate art-glass goblets.

More

02.01.18

Up and Coming

The Chilean Floral Artist Taking Over Your Instagram Feed

Getting ahold of Carolina Spencer isn’t easy. When she’s not designing ceramic vases, the Barcelona-based creative behind the floral Instagram sensation Matagalan is busy finessing ikebana-like installations for the foyers of the relaxed fashion label Masscob, or refreshing weekly foliage amongst the city’s flourishing cafés and coffee shops — Casa Bonay and Satan’s Coffee among them. In fact, you’re probably already familiar with her work even if you aren’t based in the Catalonian capital. In her feed, artfully balanced ceramic totems and ikebana-inspired botanicals make for an enviably satisfying scroll.

More

01.31.18

Sighted

An Artist Who Moves Shapes From Two Dimensions to Three

To understand the work of artist Elizabeth Atterbury — and how it's changed since we first profiled her almost exactly three years ago — look no further than the solo exhibition she had at Mrs. Gallery in New York this past spring: While she used to photograph the geometric compositions she created from sand, cut metal, or corrugated paper, those elements now appear both as two-dimensional images and as three-dimensional works in their own right.

More

01.30.18

Shopping

10 Underrated Glassware Sets — By Iconic Designers — That You Can Buy Right Now

Turns out epically cool glassware sets by a murderers' row of iconic designers — Ettore Sottsass, Enzo Mari, Gio Ponti, Joe Colombo, and Achille Castiglioni among them — have been hiding out in plain sight on the internet (half of them are even available on Amazon!). We've rounded up 10 of our favorites here.

More

01.30.18

Excerpt: Magazine

Design History: A Timeline of the Most Iconic Dining Objects of All Time

If we’re being totally honest, our idea to create a timeline of iconic dining objects for the second-ever issue of MOLD — the bi-annual journal about the future of food, which we were invited to guest-edit by our friend and colleague Linyee Yuan — didn’t initially spring from any grand pedagogic ambition to illustrate the history of design through the lens of one of humankind’s most universal rituals. It came, rather, from a chance, late-night encounter with a particularly nostalgic bit of pop culture: the Beetlejuice dinner-party scene.

More

06.06.16

Shopping

32 Statement-Making Geometric Rugs You Can Buy Right Now

At the end of last year, we began to notice a new trend in patterned rugs. Gone were the ubiquitous chevron stripes and hexagonal motifs, and in their place was a new kind of graphic, geometric look — elemental shapes that had been stacked, abstracted, layered, mixed, or simply juxtaposed alongside each other (in other words, a pretty healthy reflection of what's happening in furniture design right now as well). As with most trends, the second we began noticing one or two rugs in this vein, they were suddenly everywhere. So, we did what any object-obsessed, semi-helpful design blog ought to do — we gathered them all into one place, for your shopping enjoyment. Herewith, your definitive guide to Sight Unseen's favorite, statement-making geometric rugs — and where to find (and buy) them right now.

More

01.29.18

At Home With

At Home in Hudson, With A Designer Embracing the DIY Culture of Upstate New York

Over the past few years, as designers from Bushwick to Red Hook have begun moving farther and farther up the Hudson River, we've begun to wonder: Is upstate New York the new Brooklyn? Five years ago, one of those such designers was Elise McMahon of LikeMindedObjects, a RISD grad who works within a kind of freeform, collaborative, ad hoc aesthetic. We visited her art-filled home in Hudson, New York late last summer to find out more.

More

01.27.18

Saturday Selects

Week of January 22, 2018

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: '70s-inspired lamps to pair with your vintage leather sofa, a new furniture collection by up-and-coming New York architects, and five exhibitions worth seeing now, including the beautiful wooden sculptures of Riyosuke Yazaki (above).

More

01.26.18

Excerpt: Magazine

10 Designers on Their Favorite Dining Chairs

When you love design as much as we do, it can be hard to choose your favorite, well, anything. If asked to choose our favorite dining chair of all time, for example, would we pick a luxurious Milo Baughman? Or something more classic like Breuer's Cesca chair? That's exactly the question we posed to 10 designers around the world in our role as guest editors of the second-ever issue of MOLD Magazine.

More

01.25.18

Eye Candy

Moody, Limited-Edition Pieces By a Brand-New Berlin Design Collective

Three years ago, at a café in Berlin, three friends — Joern Scheipers, David Kosock, and Bart Navarra — came up with the idea to channel their love for art and design into creating furniture. Their friendship — and their backgrounds in fashion, branding, and architecture — finally coalesced last year into VAUST, an experimental furniture and interiors studio whose first collection launched earlier this month at Der Berliner Salon.

More

01.24.18

Studio Visit

A Belgian Designer in Morocco On What It’s Like to Run a Global Brand Via Instagram

Working from the center of a medina in Marrakech might not seem like the most straightforward way to achieve international acclaim, but with an aesthetic that walks right up to an Anthro catalog, then takes a sharp left toward Picasso, Laurence Leenaert of LRNCE has done just that. We caught up with Leenaert in her showroom-cum-studio to find out what it's like to run a global brand via Instagram, how she stays inspired, and why she can’t imagine being anywhere else.

More

01.23.18

Fair Report

45 Key Designs We Spotted At IMM Cologne and Maison & Objet 2018

While IMM Cologne and Maison et Objet aren't the most outwardly exciting fairs on the design calendar, they can be particularly fun for us to cover. The reason has to do with why we love antique shopping so much: It can be more gratifying to make small, triumphant discoveries amidst a sea of less-relevant items than to be surrounded by perfection at every turn. The thrill of the hunt, if you will. Here are 45+ of our biggest finds.

More

01.22.18

Excerpt: Exhibition

Eny Lee Parker’s New Ceramic Chainmail Has a Secret Message Encoded in Its Links

Where do you go after you've been named this year's "breakout American design star" AND one of the best fashion brands of 2017? If you're Eny Lee Parker, you just keep churning out incredible new work, even if you're in the throes of an upcoming cross-country move. The triple-threat ceramicist/furniture designer/jewelry maker debuted a new collection this weekend, and while the new work covers some familiar ground (thick ceramic legs as table bases), Parker also dug deep into a new obsession: ceramic chainmail.

More