03.30.24

Saturday Selects

Week of March 25, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a sizeable exhibition of furniture and art in Rome by the now-solo Ronan Bouroullec, (yet another) newcomer South Korean furniture studio we've got our eye on, and three interiors in France and New York with a warm, vintage-heavy appeal, including the eclectic project above by Corpus Studio.

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03.29.24

Fair Report

10 Projects We Loved at the 2024 Collectible Fair in Brussels

The biggest news to come out of this month's Collectible fair, now in its seventh year, wasn't about a ground-breaking gallery or a new designer at all but rather the fact that the Brussels-based fair — much beloved in the design community for its rigorous curation and its commitment to highlighting emerging designers in the collectible field — will be debuting a show in New York this fall. From September 4-10, the inaugural US edition will take place inside the enigmatic WSA building in New York's financial district; it follows this year's successful westward expansion of Alcova into Miami. What can we say, we Americans love to shop! If you're the collecting kind, consider our round-up of the most interesting projects to come out of this year's Collectible fair in Brussels a preview of what's to come.

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03.28.24

Q+A

Architectural and Archetypal, Kalon Pieces Are Defined By Their Thoughtful Details   

Since 2007, Michaele Simmering and Johannes Pauwen have been producing work that is as poetic as it is practical through their Los Angeles studio, Kalon. The studio borrows its name from an Ancient Greek concept of ideal beauty that comprises both physical and moral aspects. It’s a high bar to set. In their practice, Simmering and Pauwen take a principled approach that seriously considers the environmental and social impact of what they do; “sustainability” has become an overused word, but for Kalon, it’s a true ethos, guiding not only their production process — in terms of the materials and labor involved ­— but also how their designs exist in the world. To celebrate Kalon joining the Sight Unseen Collection, we checked in to get a sense of what’s changed — and what hasn’t — since we last touched base.

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03.26.24

Sighted

In Julie Richoz’s New Mirrors for Vitra, Color Theory and the Tiniest Details Work to Change the Way We See

When Julie Richoz, a Swiss-French designer in Paris, was envisioning her new Colour Frame Mirror for Vitra, she was drawn to elemental forms, inspired in part by wooden building blocks and toys, those staples of childhood. “I like the innocent gestures they refer to — the simple pleasure of playing with colors and shape,” she says. But even as her mirror references those basic objects, it also moves beyond them. There’s a fun lightness here, but there's also a high degree of sophistication, precision, and intent.

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03.23.24

Saturday Selects

Week of March 18, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: highlights from the inaugural Matter and Shape show in Paris, two exhibitions of cheerful winter-busting paintings in New York, a colorful new look for De Sede (above), and a double-sided terrycloth shower curtain that would enliven even the dullest bathroom.

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02.25.22

Sighted

A Whimsical Parisian Shoe Store By One of France’s Biggest Up-and-Coming Talents

Sophie Dries's design for the Michel Vivien store is relatively simple, in that it centers around a 50-foot-long undulating walnut wood wall pierced with glass and wooden floating shelves. But it is the art and objects — abstract, totem-like sculptures, stools by Pierre Chapo used as pediments for displaying shoes, plush velvet seating, and lighting by Jacques Biny and Charlotte Perriand — and the way she artfully arranges them that make the space so interesting.

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03.20.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

A New Show — and a New Location — for Superhouse is Allowing Stephen Markos to Think Big

It's fitting that Paa Joe’s Celestial City is the inaugural show in Superhouse's expanded space. Not only because the Ghanaian sculptor’s work spans art and design, but because it speaks to a certain aesthetic conversation between the present and the past that Superhouse has been participating in — a contemporary revival of an early '80s aesthetic, kind of Postmodern, occasionally mixed with Warholian commercial iconography. It sparks thoughts on how we interact with brands and the commodification of just about everything, but it’s also… fun.

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03.18.24

Interiors

In Her Debut Interior, Tabitha Organ Uses Texture To Create the Illusion of Time

In 2023, after a decade of working in the industry — most notably with that subject of eternal Sight Unseen fascination, Sella Concept — Tabitha Organ founded her own interior design studio, Tabitha Isobel. Its first residential project, a five-floor Victorian townhouse in London, predictably wows. A previous renovation left the space devoid of character, so the goal was to restore some of its former glory while speaking to the current moment and anticipating the future. The studio achieved this with a mix of vintage and new elements and a contrast throughout between hits of reflective, shiny chrome surfaces and the warmth and richness of wood.

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03.16.24

Saturday Selects

Week of March 11, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a bookend that reminds us of a thicc 70s-era font, a chair series inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke, and a glass collection by LA artist Austin Fields, with sinuous curves reminiscent of the human body.

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03.14.24

The Essentials

Ask the Experts: How Do I Get Started With PR?

Whether you’ve been in the business for years or are just launching your studio, PR can be a powerful tool for boosting your reputation and visibility as a designer. But, as an independent creative or small business, we know your daily to-do list can seem insurmountable. Is doing PR on your own worth the effort? What can PR really offer, and how do you get started? As design fair season ramps up, Sight Unseen has partnered with Hello Human, a PR company for creative entrepreneurs, for a new series that breaks down some of the most common questions about the often nebulous world of public relations. Here, we’ll introduce you to the basics. 

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03.12.24

Sighted

Sunnei and cc-tapis Just Dropped the Ultimate Fashion x Design Collab, Where Carpets Become Clothing and Vice Versa

In addition to their playfully chic sartorial offerings, Sunnei has been on our radar for years thanks to their periodic overlaps with the design world, from a thoughtful ongoing object collection to the collaboration they presented during Salone in 2022 with our friends at Bloc Studios. And yet I was still surprised and delighted when, after I emailed the brand's PR team asking for a press kit for the brand's FW24 fashion show, it turned out the striking striped knitwear pieces that I'd immediately been drawn to were actually a collaboration with one of our other favorite Milanese brands, rug-maker cc-tapis.

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03.09.24

Saturday Selects

Week of March 4, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the spring weather in New York goes hand in hand with a slew of new exhibition openings, including an archival Max Lamb show, a Bushwick gallery meditating on consumer iconography, and the new Latin American "Crafting Modernity" design exhibition at MoMA.

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03.07.24

Sighted

A Bronze Mirror Side Table, A Stained Mahogany Dining Table: Our Favorite Finds From CB2’s New Black in Design Collection and More

There are two things happening at CB2 right now that we find endlessly exciting. The first is their ongoing collaboration with the estates of design legends like Paul McCobb and Gianfranco Frattini; that's a McCobb task chair paired with a Frattini desk above, and can we talk about this striped outdoor sofa?! The other initiative is something that we mentioned in our Q&A with Evan Jerry of Studio Anansi last summer: the Black in Design collective, which brings together, under Jerry's curation, works by 13 Black designers. This spring welcomes Niger’s Atelier Masomi, founded by Mariam Issoufou Kamara, and Nifemi Marcus-Bello’s nmbello Studio in Lagos, Nigeria, to the fold, along with a slate of new pieces from the Collective's existing studios.

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