04.28.25

In Conversation

Two of Our Favorite Woodworkers on Apprenticeships, Supportive Grandmas, and Learning the Rules So You Can Break Them

Rio Kobayashi and Luke Malaney each make sculptural furniture that exists somewhere between art, design, and carpentry. They're pieces that serve a function but at the same time question function: What should an object actually do? Where does its purpose lie? It’s a blurry line — or maybe not even a line at all. While they come from different backgrounds — Malaney is originally a Long Islander who lives in Brooklyn, while Kobayashi grew up in Japan and is currently based in London — they’ve arrived at a distinctively similar style and approach. Their work shares a playful and imaginative spirit, combined with a respect for longevity and integrity — objects that are well-made but also driven by curiosity, inventiveness, and experimentation. We suspected they’d have a lot to talk about — spoiler: they did! — so we wanted to introduce them and see where the conversation led.

04.26.25

Saturday Selects

Week of April 21, 2025

A weekly recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: textiles galore, including new Madeline Weinrib rugs in dialogue with Rene Ricard at Emma Scully Gallery, a Su Wu–curated tapestry exhibition in Dallas, and woven paintings on view in Brooklyn.

04.25.25

Trend Report

Is Bed Rotting the Biggest Trend to Come Out of Milan?

I'm slightly wary of what I'm about to write. After all, the last time I talked about a design trend reflecting our collective desire to escape, we plunged, not a month later, into the pandemic — which was certainly an exit from contemporary life of sorts. But while scrolling through Instagram during this month's Milan furniture fair, I began to notice an inescapable trend along those same lines: Beds were absolutely everywhere.

04.22.25

Q+A

Crumpled Silver & Pillowy Stone — This Cult Favorite Jeweler’s First Furniture Collection Explores Some Familiar Themes

There’s a creative tension that animates the work of Anna Jewsbury, founder and artistic director of Completedworks in London. It centers on the push and pull between “ornament and practicality,” as she puts it, exploring a balance of function and frivolity. What often results are pieces, loaded with character, that make you look twice — if not again and again — trying to figure them out. Completedworks began in 2013, with jewelry, before delving into ceramics and homewares. But most recently, Jewsbury decided to branch out even furniture, launching the brand's first-ever collection at Villa Borsani with Alcova in Milan earlier this month.

04.19.25

Saturday Selects

Week of April 14, 2025

A weekly recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: stainless-steel urinal sculptures, a coral-colored house balanced on a steep site, and fruit-decorated furniture that aims to tackle the stigma of eating disorders.

01.30.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

In a Philippe Starck Retrospective, The Designer’s Early Work Reads As Both Vintage and Prescient

Before Philippe Starck became a mega-famous household name, producing everything from countertop juicers to opulent hotel lobbies and Bond-villain yachts, the French designer conceived of Postmodern furniture that feels distinctly of its time yet continues to fascinate and compel us. Starck’s work from the late '70s and '80s is now getting its first retrospective at the Ketabi Bourdet gallery in Paris. In a way, it’s the next step in the ongoing re-evaluation of designs from that era and a continuation of the conversation the gallery opened up last year with an exhibition of the visionary Italian designer Paolo Pallucco.

04.18.25

Fair Report

The Best of Milan Design Week 2025, Part II: Standout Exhibitions, Projects, and Interiors

We're rounding out our coverage of this year's Milan fair with a post dedicated to the best exhibitions, interiors, and projects. In our case, focusing primarily on those produced by independent designers and galleries.

04.17.25

Fair Report

The Best of Milan Design Week 2025, Part I: Our Favorite Collection Debuts

What resonated with us most this year in Milan was, as it often is, collections by independent designers who have been in their studios, often for months or even years, toiling to bring these products to market.

04.16.25

Fair Report

La Double J’s New Milan Offices Are, Fittingly, a Five-Floor Explosion of Color and Pattern

Erstwhile journalist and lifelong tastemaker JJ Martin was way ahead of the game on maximalism. Back in 2015, the Milan-based American expat was founding her housewares and clothing company La Double J, and though her target audience at the time was rather different from ours — Europe's social set — she built a colorful, joyful brand that has since won over pattern-lovers of all stripes, including yours truly. To mark La Double J's ascension into fashion and design's popular vernacular, as well as celebrate its 10th anniversary, she opened the doors during last week's Salone to its impressive new home in Milan, which is just as exuberant as its offerings.

04.14.25

Fair Report

In Milan, Objects of Common Interest and Marsèll Team Up on an Exhibition That Uses Materials as Spatial Interventions

When the Italian boutique leather brand Marsèll opened its showroom a year and a half ago on Via Spiga, Milan's luxury shopping street, it was an exercise in restraint — similar to the shoes and bags on offer, the interior, by Berlin's Lotto Studio, took a minimal approach to form, with almost all the emphasis on the interplay of high-end natural materials like glass, stone, stainless steel, and walnut. That elegant spareness has made it not only the perfect visual expression of the brand, but also the perfect neutral backdrop against which to stage designer interventions during the Milan furniture fair. Last year Marsèll welcomed Gonzalez Haase AAS into the space, and this year, Objects of Common Interest — the New York– and Athens–based practice of Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis — did the honors, with a two-floor installation called Adaptive Ground that "explores the relationship between space and material."

04.12.25

Saturday Selects

Week of April 7, 2025

A weekly recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a major new art talent on view in Los Angeles, a new Scandinavian vintage design showroom in Chelsea, and the print version of a satirical newsletter on the intersection of dating and design.

04.09.25

Interiors

Think of This London Renovation As Mid-Century, Modernized

Studio Hagen Hall, an architecture and design firm in London founded by Louis Hagen-Hall, has a talent for creating spaces that are striking yet serene — making them look effortless while also paying meticulous attention to detail. For Pine Heath, a townhome that’s part of a series originally designed by South African architect Ted Levy, Benjamin & Partners in the late 1960s, Hagen Hall brings California mid-century modern to North London’s Hampstead Conservation Area.

04.03.25

Excerpt: Exhibition

In Paris, Sophie Buhai Blurs the Line Between Jewelry and Object

On view at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval in Paris until June 30 is Jewelry Objects, an exhibition of 19 unique or limited-edition pieces by Sophie Buhai created on the occasion of Buhai's studio's 10th anniversary.

04.28.25

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