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02.12.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

These Ceramic Lamps, Paired With Delicate Paper and Bamboo Shades, Are About to Be Everywhere

We first stumbled across Bennet Schlesinger's lamps on the Instagram of a friend. Perched atop two handmade ceramic bases were shades made from translucent paper sheets, stretched across a cambered latticework of bamboo strips. They were glowing and fresh and new, and we immediately fell in love. Now, the Southern California–based Schlesinger, who designs under the name Lightsong Exchange, is co-headlining an exhibition of his work at the new Los Angeles gallery Stanley’s.
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09.03.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

Do You Love Your Toilet Paper Holder? Probably Not, But At a New Show, There Are 50+ Reasons to Change Your Mind

Toilet paper holders are, as a general rule, kind of the worst — which is why it's so heartening to see a whole exhibition devoted to them at Marta Los Angeles, on view from September 10 through November 1. Like so many everyday object shows before it, Under/Over — which features contributions from 53 studios — is both a cross-section of contemporary design, and a reflection of each designer's practice.
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07.20.20

Up and Coming

Polina Miliou’s Paper Pulp Pieces Have So Much Personality She Sometimes Gets Mad At Them

Whether chairs, macaroni-shaped light fittings, or knotted, tubular standing lamps, Polina Miliou sees her pieces as creatures. “I often start from an archetypal furniture form and gradually twist it into more of a character,” she says. Once she’s sculpted their form, she dresses the pieces in a final smooth layer of papier-mâché. “It is a slow but fun process, during which I literally slap and caress the furniture,” she says. “The time I spend with each piece lets me build a personal relationship with it."
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07.14.20

At Home With

How Brendan Ravenhill Ended Up Living In — And Restoring — a 1938 Schindler House in the Hills of Los Angeles

Brendan Ravenhill and his wife, Marjory Garrison, had been living in Echo Park for years before they realized that they were living around the corner from a gem of Modernist architecture. Built in 1938 by Rudolf Schindler, the Austrian architect whose volumetric residences dot Los Angeles, the Southall house, as it's called, was hidden from street view and in a state of disrepair when it fell into Ravenhill's lap in the mid-2010s.
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Kalon Studios Rugosa Offsite Online
06.17.20

Offsite Online

Kalon Studios On Their Pared-Down Rugosa Collection and What It Truly Means to Be Essential

The word “perfect” is subjective. It holds within it an individual’s taste and proclivities, needs and non-starters. The search can be elusive, exhausting — but also thrilling and very satisfying. But we'd venture to say the new Rugosa collection from Los Angeles–based Kalon Studios offers a seven-piece slate of perfect living room pieces, for anyone tired of the hunt but also for anyone who’s over the idea of furniture that doesn’t actually get used, sat upon, or well-loved.
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06.16.20

Offsite Online

Cuff Studio’s New Collection Explores the Idea of Common Ground

So much of design can be about standing apart from the crowd. But for Cuff Studio, it was commonality that inspired their Offsite collection. For their Common Ground collection Kristi Bender and Wendy Schwartz of the Los Angeles–based studio looked to shared design elements that form not only a foundation within their practice, but in art and design as a whole. What they found was nature, form, shape, negative space, even community.
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05.25.20

Offsite Online

Christopher Norman is Turning the Castoff Urban Trees of Los Angeles Into Art

Los Angeles–based architect and designer Christopher Norman’s new collection of hand-machined minimal forms resists standardization. His untitled “extrusions” in ash and cedar and pine riff on a hardware aesthetic, while maintaining the organic ethos seen in much of his other, more fluidly-shaped work. Forgoing pre-cut lumber, Norman uses wood from freshly cut trees. “If you’re working with commercial wood, you get a very normalized look and set of proportions. It’s basically highly mediated,” he explains.
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BZIPPY Offsite Online
05.19.20

Offsite Online

BZIPPY’s Outsized Ceramic Works Are the Statement in the Room — Not the Accent

If you’re lucky enough to ever see one of LA-based artist and sculptor Bari Ziperstein’s outsized ceramic works in person, the combination of scale, texture, and hue might stop you in your tracks. Her design studio, BZIPPY, creates striking, often Brutalist-inspired ceramic vases, lamps, and furniture, while within her complementary fine art practice, Ziperstein has been known to explore meticulously manicured fingers, dimensionality, or the aesthetics of Soviet propaganda. With her robust dual practice, Ziperstein welcomes decorative ceramics into the fine art conversation, and vice versa.
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05.13.20

At Home With

The Minimal, Masculine Eagle Rock Hideaway of a Top Creative Director

Since relocating to Los Angeles from New York, former Mast Brothers creative director Nathan Warkentin has devoted time to the gut renovation of the Eagle Rock home he shares with his wife and infant son. It was the first time, he says, that he’s had the chance to translate his interest in interiors fully into his own space, which is a 1,500 square-foot study in agreeable contrast: indoor collides with outdoor, antique combines with contemporary, minimalism mingles with warmth.
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04.10.20

Studio Visit

This L.A. Artist’s Studio Is the Epitome of Calming, Meditative Vibes

For Los Angeles–born artist Cindy Hsu Zell, nature has been a lifelong inspiration. Working from her sunny North Hollywood studio, Zell creates tactile sculptures with rope, ceramic, wood, and, most recently, stone. In the midst of this confounding global crisis, we remote-toured her space and took some time to chat with her about confronting the economics of productivity, prioritizing mindful practices, and the magic of working with organic materials.
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