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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Week of June 25, 2018

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week — a particularly rough one in America — was, naturally, all about escapism: A visit to the impossibly serene studio of Muller Van Severen (above), a theory on why design's current obsession with "cute," chubby furniture might be a salve for our political and economical troubles, and an incredible art park that has us daydreaming ourselves to New Zealand.
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A Belgian Designer in Morocco On What It’s Like to Run a Global Brand Via Instagram

Working from the center of a medina in Marrakech might not seem like the most straightforward way to achieve international acclaim, but with an aesthetic that walks right up to an Anthro catalog, then takes a sharp left toward Picasso, Laurence Leenaert of LRNCE has done just that. We caught up with Leenaert in her showroom-cum-studio to find out what it's like to run a global brand via Instagram, how she stays inspired, and why she can’t imagine being anywhere else.
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A New Brooklyn Talent Turning Paint, Cement, and Scraps Into Of-the-Moment Objects

Cooper Union grad Nick Parker has been working steadily since 2009 to refine a materials-driven, process-based approach to making. His vases are composed of cement that he pigments, layers, and sands until it starts to resemble some hyperactive version of linoleum. His "paintings" are made from layers of paint and paint-like materials embedded with scraps. We visited his home studio in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to learn more about his craft.
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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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Chiyome minimalist handbags

Chiyome’s Japanese-Inspired, Minimalist Handbags

It’s easy to look at the work of designer Anna Moss and draw associations with a familiar sort of functional Japanese minimalism: her line of handbags, CHIYOME, is named for her Japanese great-grandmother. Yet for Moss, the starting point is plainly straightforward: “I strive for simplicity and that can take many forms,” she explains. What interests her is not minimalism for the sake of it, but rather a focus on the bag as vessel; it’s a study less in stripping back and more in adding intentionality.
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Tureens, Totems, & Tables: What’s Next for Workaday Handmade

When we think of ceramicists at work, we often conjure romantic visions of noble artisans wearing clay-streaked aprons and strenuously channeling their artistic magic behind a potter’s wheel. Which is mostly true, to a point, and yet — what happens once that noble artisan also has to figure out how to run a thriving, growing business? To find out, we visited the Brooklyn studio of the hugely successful Forrest Lewinger (aka Workaday Handmade) with photographer Paul Barbera.
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Hunting & Narud Studio Visit

Hunting & Narud Are Rewriting the Rules of Scandinavian Design

Originally from Norway, Amy Hunting and Oscar Narud both completed design education abroad — Hunting at the prestigious Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (KADK) in Copenhagen and Narud at the RCA in London — but the design heritage of their home country remains an important theme in their work. "There's obviously this romanticized cliché of Scandinavian style but a lot of young designers are now trying to push back," says Narud when we talk about their aspiration to reinterpret the stereotypical notions of a Nordic aesthetic. "Scandinavian design is redefining itself with our generation. We all struggle with the weight of the heritage, but there's a lot of stuff happening now."
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Our Most Popular Posts of 2015

This week we'll be reflecting back on your favorites — the top ten stories you loved, the images you pinned, the Instagrams you thought were 100 (double underscore!). Today we're starting with our top ten most popular posts of 2015 — enjoy our look back this week, and see you back here in 2016!
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Group Partner's Boob Pots

The Brooklyn Ceramicist Behind the Insanely Popular “Boob Pots”

Even with its door wide open, Isaac Nichols’s Greenpoint studio is easy to miss. Walk past, look around, turn back, and there it is, tucked inside a cavernous, garage-like space that’s served as a creative home base for Nichols (who works under the name Group Partner) and a wide circle of artist friends for the past two years. The studio, unassuming from the outside, hums within: music plays; the stretch and tear of packing tape is constant. All around, laid out on makeshift surfaces and shelves, are Nichols’s signature pieces in varying stages of completion: ceramic pots molded to mimic breasts, each adorned in a hand-painted outfit, and his famous face pots, each with one of three appointed names: Adam, Rory, or Pat.
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