Week of February 29, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: A David Hockney library, a Gio Ponti flatware collection, a bracelet inspired by Mario Botta, and a brand new collection by two of the founding members of Memphis.
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Erika Emerén is Doing Magical Things With Concrete

Swedish designer Erika Emerén's current practice involves dyeing and casting concrete in an experimental process that she has very little control over, then using it to make chairs, tables, and soon, lamps too. "The results always vary, especially when I'm mixing different colors," she says. "But that's what I prefer, to make something unique. The that I can't control is what makes the design interesting."
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Week of February 15, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Unexpected collabs (Issey Miyake x Ittala, La Perla x Walter Terruso), surprise mug subscriptions (Helen Levi, Ben Medansky), and a striking Amsterdam store interior by Framework (pictured).
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Dutch design studio Os ∆ Oos

Dutch Design Studio Os ∆ Oos Makes Work That’s Brainy But Beautiful

Four years ago, Sight Unseen featured the first product by what was then a brand-new studio on the scene: The Syzygy series by Dutch duo Os ∆ Oos consisted of three lamps whose intensity depended on the subtle rotation of three light-filtering discs placed in front of the bulb; it was inspired by the astronomical phenomenon of three celestial bodies aligning in space. As a design product, it was both conceptually driven and artistically minded, but it was, at the end of the day, a lamp. “We’re definitely not artists; we’re designers,” clarifies Oskar Peet, who with Sophie Mensen makes up the Eindhoven-based studio. “We like to make functional projects.”
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15 Things We Loved At Stockholm Design Week 2016

While we would have happily braved the cold and darkness of Stockholm Design Week just to eat Kalles Kaviar for breakfast, snag some Acne staples at a cut rate, and do a self-guided tour of the key spots featured in Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle books, it's also one of our favorite design fairs, not least because the Scandi scene is so hyper-relevant right now. These 15 Stockholm Design Week highlights are must-sees.
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Ladies & Gentlemen's Brooklyn studio

Playing Around With the Cool Kids of American Design

Inside the experimental playground that is Ladies & Gentlemen's new Brooklyn studio: “All of our work is an evolution of itself,” says Dylan Davis, one-half of the up-and-coming design couple. Shapes on a piece of jewelry might lead to a geometric take on lighting; that, in turn, might inspire the assorted forms suspended on a mobile. However distinct, each piece is unmistakably linked to the next, joined by an understated elegance and what the two refer to as "playful austerity." “We try to embrace that feeling you had as a kid when you got to really explore,” Davis says. “Our goal is to take that spirit of play and figure out how to use it professionally.”
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Week of February 1, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week is all about shapes: geometric tables and artworks, a shelf adorned with a wooden squiggle that looks like a break in the space-time continuum, a series of angular Brutalist teapots, and the epic Vignelli-esque, Toogood-esque Moser tray pictured above.
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The Hip New Face of Brazilian Design

Pedro Paulo Venzon Is the Hip New Face of Brazilian Design

History looms large over Brazilian design — how to compete with tropical modernism? Sergio Rodrigues? Lina Bo Bardi? Everyone's got it pegged, which is why the work of Pedro Paulo Venzon is so exciting: He's the first young up-and-coming Brazilian designer we've seen who's totally nailing the delicate balance between paying homage to the legacy of his forebears, and developing an aesthetic that's new, cool, and relevant to the international contemporary scene.
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Our Top 10 Finds From Maison & Objet

In the spring edition of the fair, we found refreshing colorways (so long neon and pastels!) and sophisticated sensibilities. If you didn’t get chance to visit the French capital, never fear: Behold our guide to the best furniture finds and more from the week.
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Europe's New Generation of Design Stars

Experimental Objects from a New Generation of Design Stars

Considering this is our fifth year covering the Ornsbergsauktionen, a design auction produced annually by some of our favorite Swedish talents in conjunction with Stockholm Design Week, we began to wonder what it is about this particular event that we love so much. For us, it basically hits all the sweet spots — it focuses on the small-scale production of experimental objects, it commissions work only from contemporary designers with unusual or inventive practices, and it photographs really, really well.
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Week of January 18, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: The latest iridescent confections, new ceramics from New York and L.A., and some early picks from Maison et Objet, including an exciting new design brand working with a powerhouse of emerging European talents (like Thevoz—Choquet, whose new bench is pictured above).
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Brooklyn brownstone Sharktooth

The Brooklyn Brownstone of Sit + Read’s Kyle Garner and Sharktooth’s Kellen Tucker

Kyle Garner and Kellen Tucker may do magazine-level work for clients, but when it comes to their own two-floor brownstone in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, it’s barely about looks at all. “The driving force is comfort,” says Tucker, who deals antique textiles through her shop Sharktooth. “If you close your eyes and walk into this house, does it feel good?” Garner, the furniture dealer and designer behind Sit + Read, agrees: “We prioritize the feeling over the aesthetic,” he says.
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