05.12.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

Meet the NYC Art Collective Who Brought Their Explorations of “Vaguely Asian” Identities to Milan

Comprising four New York City–based artists, the collective CFGNY employs an unruly creative output to assert their own lived experience of being what they call “vaguely Asian” in America. The group recently staged an exhibition called Emporium during last month’s Milan furniture fair — presented by Italian leather brand Marséll and curated by PIN-UP magazine’s Felix Burrichter — that employs cardboard, porcelain, and leather to further complicate this idea of a blurry Asian-ness. The sculptures created with Marséll especially for the show, like leather-wrapped replicas of architectural details from Milan’s Chinatown, elucidate contact points between cultures and identity groups.
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05.11.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

This London Exhibition Highlights the Particular Pleasure of Mixing New and Historical Works

If you've read our book, you probably know by now that mixing vintage and contemporary pieces is one of the many keys to our heart. So we were excited last month to see that the East London–based gallery and design shop Spazio Leone — who we know primarily as a purveyor of wonderfully Postmodern and classic collectible pieces — was presenting new works by the Eindhoven-based Italian designer Francesco Pace of Tellurico, alongside some of the more delightful objects drawn from Spazio Leone's collection.
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05.09.23

Sighted

Meet the Belgian Designer Pushing the Limits of Stained Glass

The Stained Glass Lights collection from Belgian designer Maarten de Ceulaer — in which illuminated sheets or cylinders of handmade, mouth-blown glass essentially become three-dimensional abstract paintings — is a beautiful balance of control and chaos. While the colors are deliberately chosen and it’s possible to guide the fabrication process to some extent, there’s no way to wholly calibrate the outcome with this material; each piece is a bit of an experiment.
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05.05.23

Sighted

This Australian Designer Scoured Paris’s Flea Markets for Her New Vintage Capsule Collection

With their newly launched CLO Capsule, Australian interior design atelier and boutique CLO Studios makes a strong case for visiting Parisian flea markets. It helps if you have a shipping container to fill, which they did, collecting secondhand, vintage, and antique European design treasures over the course of a year to bring back to Australia. Founder and creative director Chloe Tozer has always traveled to find inspiration and on her journeys has struck up friendships with suppliers from Morocco to Beijing. But Paris was always a destination for the company to attend design fairs and exhibitions until a visit in 2022, when Tozer was intrigued by the local flea markets and what she might find among the stalls. She went with no intention to buy…at first. “Once I arrived, I thought, “How can I not?!”
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10.03.20

Saturday Selects

Week of September 28, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: LRNCE makes her first lamps, a New York designer releases a Memphis-style mirror to rival the Ultrafragola, and India Mahdavi opens a project space for experimental installations like the one pictured above.
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05.04.23

Interiors

Thank This Couple For Bringing a Dose of Color to Berlin’s Interiors

Progressing from designing furniture for children to interiors for the whole family could easily result in spaces that were kitschy or too twee. But not in the hands of Berlin studio Jäll & Tofta, whose projects carry the joy and spirit of childhood whimsy, yet with a sophisticated, well-considered maturity. If you ever needed proof that colorful can be chic (which we didn’t, obviously), this is it.
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05.03.23

Interiors

This Prefab Bubble House in the French Countryside is Giving Elevated Airplane Interior

Inspired by natural forms — eggs, fruits, air bubbles — Jean-Benjamin Maneval’s design for Maison Belle omits any straight lines. The same went for the interiors, spearheaded by creative studio KIF and Dorothée Meilichzon of CHZON. Working within the curved shells was complicated and everything had to be made completely bespoke, made to measure inch by inch. The design is a tribute to the late ’60s when Maneval bubble houses were produced. “It’s an era of boldness and fun,” says Meilichzon. “Lush carpets, patterns, organic shapes, bold colors.” 
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05.02.23

Sight Unseen Presents

New York Design Week, Did You Miss Us? We’re Back, With a Show of Work by 23 Designers

Predictably, the question we always get around this time of year is: Are you bringing back Offsite?! Alas, our much-loved New York design week show, which ran in some form or another from 2010-2020, is on indefinite hiatus. But this year we'll be bringing a piece of its spirit back to life: From May 18-24, Sight Unseen will host an exhibition featuring the newest additions to the Sight Unseen Collection, which comprises furniture, lighting, and objects from a stable of emerging and mid-career designers from around the world, all orderable directly through Sight Unseen. The exhibition — taking place at Voltz Clarke gallery on the Lower East Side — will feature new work by 23 designers and studios, displayed alongside the paintings of France-based artist Heather Chontos.
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05.01.23

Sighted

Sarah Ellison Gives Bauhaus a Feminine Spin With Her Tubular Chromeo Chair

Are tubular metal chairs back? Almost a century since Marcel Breuer started churning out seating designs formed from sculptural lines of curved stainless steel, like the B5, Wassily, and Cesca models, Australian designer Sarah Ellison has paid homage to these Bauhaus icons with the launch of her Chromeo lounge chair. A more contemporary and feminine spin on the intentionally simple style, with its curvy silhouette and bolstered cushioning, the design offers a fresh approach to the movement’s ethos of combining art, craftsmanship, and mass production.
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04.29.23

Saturday Selects

Week of April 24, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an animal-printed collection from Sarah Sherman Samuel, a luxe revision of a 19th-century neo-Gothic Italian palazzo, and some stand-out interiors from Milan.
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04.28.23

Sighted

The Outdoor Collections Making Us Long For Warmer Weather

It’s almost time, in most of the northern hemisphere at least, to spend as much of the day outside as possible. (This is, we understand, both a statement of fact and a piece of wish fulfillment.) And while we have typically struggled to find effortlessly great outdoor furniture, the new outdoor dining and lounging collections from Danish design company Skagerak — which joined another Danish furniture mainstay, Fritz Hansen, to officially become Skagerak by Fritz Hansen last year — is a serious contender. Their new Pelagus series, named after the Greek word for sea, evokes a deeply relaxing, maritime atmosphere. But with their clean Scandinavian lines and unfussy simplicity, these tables, chairs, and sunbeds could fit in just about anywhere.
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04.27.23

Fair Report

The Best of the Salone del Mobile 2023: Part III

Today we’re featuring the best of Salone Satellite — the fair's emerging designer showcase — as well as Alcova and the rest of the Fuorisalone around town. Some favorites included the hefty, haute glass kettlebells by Chef Deco at Alcova, Daisuke Yamamoto's lightweight gauge steel chairs at Drop City, Sunnei's Murano glass pleasure objects at Convey, Loewe's tinsel and yarn repurposed chairs, and a swampy green shimmering glass bench and tubular steel chair at Satellite. 
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