The Best of New York Design Week 2023, Part II

Part II of our New York Design Week roundup — the second and final in our coverage, though we technically had so much content we could have easily done three — is mostly an accounting of the more straightforward side of design week, from group exhibitions — like the launch of the Mexican and Latin American design–focused retailer Omet and the latest Radiator Show, which upends the idea of comfort at home — to sophisticated new collection presentations by brands like Atelier de Troupe and Orior. Plus, a handful of interesting collabs, and a birds-eye view of ICFF.
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Our Favorite Finds at New York Design Week 2019 — Part II

With our OFFSITE show taking the year off, the biggest question we got this week wasn't "What have you seen that's good?" but rather "Doesn't it feel great to do nothing?" And while the latter question was valid (and the answer an emphatic yes), the fact that our schedules were free and easy this year actually allowed us to see even more that was quite good. Today we're rounding up our favorites from the two big shows, ICFF and Wanted.
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Does Eny Lee Parker Have the Best Booth at ICFF?

In the past two years, Eny Lee Parker has doubled down on ceramics as a primary material — despite having injured her back a little over a year ago while throwing a large piece on the wheel. "I’m doing my best coming up with things I can manage without throwing all the time," she explains, "so my new pieces are all about doing what you can — no need to be perfect." It's a humble way to describe what many have dubbed the best booth at ICFF this year.
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Our 75+ Favorite Finds From New York Design Week 2018

With the move of Collective Design back to March, NYC x Design — nowadays jokingly referred to as "New York Design Month" — technically shrunk a bit this year to just 15 days long, from the beginning of Egg Collective's Designing Women show to the last day of ICFF. Yet its cornucopia of content was as impressive as ever.
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14 Household Objects That Are Both Beautiful and Useful

At ICFF last month, JOIN Design partnered up with Rejuvenation, a Portland-based company rooted in making everyday products for the American home, for an exhibition entitled Make Use. The resulting collection was created by 14 West Coast studios with the idea of celebrating a few key combinations: materiality and process, craft and purpose, form and function
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The Best of ICFF, and More: Part Two of Our (Massive) NYCxDesign Roundup

It's mind-boggling for us to think that just ten years ago, during our frequent business trips to Europe, we would constantly get asked if New York Design Week was worth visiting, and we would inevitably respond that no, it was not. But oh, how things have changed. In addition to OFFSITE, Sight Unseen Presents, and everything we covered in our first NYCxDesign story earlier this month, today we're posting a massive roundup of all the exhibitions and launches that happened last week. Take the full tour after the jump.
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Furniture That Nails This Year’s Coolest Shapes

Last year, it was Memphis-inspired patterns and mobile-like lamps. This year, it's ziggurats and arches. Anna Karlin — the prolific New York designer who's practically her own department store — somehow always has her finger on the pulse of whatever it is we happen to be feeling at the moment. Today we're excerpting our favorite pieces from her third collection, launched at ICFF last month.
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Week of June 1, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: one of our favorite ICFF stragglers, two exhibitions inspired by kids' playgrounds, and three Sight Unseen OFFSITE alumni who have somehow developed entirely new bodies of work since mid-May.
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Week of May 25, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a hip summer pop-up shop in Sagaponack, two ceramicists branching out into wallpaper and shelf brackets, and more work you might have missed during ICFF, like the Earnest Studio trivets above.
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Week of May 18, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week we're bringing you a special ICFF edition, with our favorite finds from elsewhere around town (in other words, all the things we would have seen in person if we hadn't been tending to our own event!)
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Norwegian by Nature

When it comes to contemporary Scandinavian design, the furniture love tends to go to Denmark (Hay, Muuto, Normann Copenhagen) while Finland gets all the attention for its graphic design (Tsto, Lotta Niemenen, Kokoro & Moi). But Norway's design identity was always a bit more elusive — that is, until recently. This month in New York saw an onslaught of celebrations of Norwegian design, including Norwegian Icons — which celebrated the Nordic country's contribution to midcentury — and Norwegian by Nature, a survey of emerging talent curated by our friend Paul Makovsky of Metropolis, who criss-crossed the small Nordic country visiting schools, studios, and design fairs to gather a group of 23 design shops on the cusp of stardom. Norwegian by Nature was part of the Inside Norway booth at ICFF, and it was one of our favorite concepts for an exhibition in a long time. Prototypes by the up-and-coming studios (like Silje Nesdal, whose Granit bookends are shown above) were mixed with vintage pieces curated by Oslo-based Fuglen as well as works by more established companies like Roros Tweed and Mandal Veveri. All of the prototypes were having their North American debuts, but we can only hope some brave, deep-pocketed soul will soon put these beauties into production so we can see a whole lot more of them.
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Matter—Made’s 2014 Lookbook

At Matter's ICFF booth, we managed to snag a copy of the design store's brand-new Matter—Made lookbook, which was art directed, styled, and photographed by our personal Sight Unseen dream team, Benjamin Critton and Brian W. Ferry. The collection itself was already fantastic — brand new, disc-shaped LED pendants and stocky oak stools by Matter owner Jamie Gray, an expanded HS1 shelving system by Henry Julier in the cutest colors, and the first commercially available pieces from Jonathan Zawada's Affordances line. Add to that Critton's custom type treatment and props sourced by Critton and Ferry — which included black Slinkys, gold-plated hands, and a blue squiggle that looks like it fell off a Thighmaster — and you've got an excellent collectible object.
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