07.06.20

Eye Candy

Caroline Z. Hurley’s Gee’s Bend–Inspired, Stitched-Together Paintings

Caroline Z. Hurley is best known for her block-printed quilts, tablecloths, blankets, and fabrics by the yard, but if you follow Hurley on Instagram, you know that painting is also a huge part of the Brooklyn-based artist's practice. Her newest works combine elements of both mediums, using vintage fabrics or cottons woven by hand by artisans in Oaxaca as the base for painted and stitched-together canvases.

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07.01.20

Eye Candy

Gabriella Picone’s New Company — And Hand-Painted Silk Scarves — Were Inspired By Summers in Sicily

After working for four years at the New York design gallery R & Company, artist and RISD grad Gabriella Picone shifted to a full-time studio practice this year to pursue ceramics, painting, and textiles. Her first collection — the result of a company she founded called idda, which means "her" in Sicilian dialect and was inspired by Picone's childhood summers in Sicily — is a series of silk and cotton scarves printed with Picone's expressive paintings on paper.

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06.30.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

Stunning New Photos of a Murano Glass Collection That Spans 400 Years

Earlier this spring the National Gallery of Victoria mounted a survey of its sprawling Venetian glass collection called Liquid Light, which spans works from the 16th through the 20th century. The show closed in April, but we discovered its riches this month in the portfolio of one of our latest photographer crushes, Victoria Zschommler.

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06.29.20

Eye Candy

These Surrealist-Inspired Vases Are the Breakthrough That Resulted From a Creative Block

At the beginning of the pandemic, some designers may have viewed the ensuing solitude as an opportunity to "bloom where you grow." But not everyone found it easy to stay inspired. "After lockdown started in the early months of 2020, I felt completely unmotivated to make work," confesses the Brisbane ceramicist Nicolette Johnson. After a while, however, Johnson gave herself permission to make literally anything, and began sculpting shapes out of soft clay — inspired by Surrealist and Constructivist motifs — and attaching them to small wheel-thrown vases.

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07.30.18

At Home With

At Home With the Owner of Casa Shop, Our Favorite Store On Instagram

A thoughtfully presented online store selling vintage objects, Casa Shop maintains a web presence but mostly operates in the manner of Instagram’s many “digital auctions,” where stores commit to sell to whomever is the first to DM off a post. Hand-blown vases, iridescent glasses, wicker baskets, onyx bookends — these are a few of the things shoppers can expect to cull (if they move fast, as things often sell quickly) from Casa Shop’s oft-changing inventory.

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06.27.20

Saturday Selects

Week of June 22, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: two group design exhibitions with a charitable component, two new tubular lighting releases, two artisanal building materials making us wish we owned a home, and one showroom interior (above) that we can hardly believe is for a high-end paint company.

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06.25.20

Eye Candy

These Duotone Vases Are Reversible, Depending On Your Color Scheme — Or Mood

The up-and-coming Australian designer Dean Toepfer had been primarily working on commissions and larger furniture pieces — like a bar cart made from a faux terrazzo composite and a sling chair upholstered in pink shag — since graduating from RMIT. But with the onset of the pandemic, Toepfer decided to reassess. "Vase Versa is my first object collection, and first self-produced range," Toepfer explains.

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06.23.20

Eye Candy

Lex Pott’s Pandemic Pastime: A New Series of Hand-Woven Checker Chairs

Just when we'd almost begun thinking of him as "the candle guy," his pillars and tapers seemingly having colonized every store in New York, Dutch designer Lex Pott posted a photo on his Instagram late last month of a single eye-catching chair wrapped entirely in hand-woven nylon straps. We did a mini interview with Pott to find out more about the project.

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06.22.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

At Villa Cavrois, Muller Van Severen is an Eerily Perfect Match for the Modernist Estate

This month, the Belgian design duo Muller Van Severen begin a four-month intervention at Villa Cavrois, the modernist French estate designed in the late 1920s by Robert Mallet-Stevens. The show is a retrospective of sorts for the husband-and-wife duo, featuring everything from their leather-and-steel Duo Seats to brand-new work like the Alltubes series they launched this spring with Valerie Traan at Collectible and a sofa they've designed specifically in response to the installation site.

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06.20.20

Saturday Selects

Week of June 15, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: limestone-tiled benches inspired by a color system that predates pixels, chairs that reimagine construction materials, and a ceramicist raising funds for a community arts center in the heart of Atlanta.

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06.18.20

Sighted

In This Pride Month Fundraiser, 11 LGBTQ Designers Share Their Experiences and Advice

By focusing on a diverse array of experiences with facial and body hair in its branding, the shaving brand Harry’s has always (in its short history) taken pains to avoid the machismo messaging its competitors rely on to move a product that is, essentially, genderless. For Pride Month, the company is doubling down on that message with a new campaign and fundraiser celebrating a dozen queer designers and artists, Design With Pride.

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06.17.20

Offsite Online

Field Tiles’ DTC, Digital-First Model is Reinventing the Tile Industry, One Imperfect Square At a Time

Field Tiles is a new DTC tile brand whose debut HM01 (Handmade 01) collection celebrates the beauty and craft of tile-making while embracing the inherently imperfect interplay between science and color.

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