Week of March 25, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a sizeable exhibition of furniture and art in Rome by the now-solo Ronan Bouroullec, (yet another) newcomer South Korean furniture studio we’ve got our eye on, and three interiors in France and New York with a warm, vintage-heavy appeal, including the eclectic project above by Corpus Studio.

Interiors

We spotted this Paris apartment project by French interiors duo Corpus Studio on Instagram, impressed by its eclectic juxtaposition of furnishings and styling objects — the pairing of pieces like 1940s Paavo Tynell sconces with a 1970s Michel Boyer lamp, a 19th century Christopher Dresser teapot, a1980s bronze sculpture, and a 1st- to 2nd-century Roman marble panther head on loan from Galerie Chenel. What really caught our eye though were the extra-slim 1970 pine chair by Dominique Zimbacca in the kitchen and the figural oak reliefs in the living room, by Jean Touret via Galerie Yves Gastou. We want all of these pieces.
Hired to renovate a 1940s villa outside Lille, France, the architecture and interiors firm RMGB sought to undo a former renovation that they lamented had “completely altered the harmony of the place.” The designers removed modern parquet to reveal the original floors, restored the glass roof and the epic spiral staircase balustrade seen above, reinstalled an original sink found languishing in the basement, and generally did what they could to bring the space back to its roots. The only exception being the furniture, which is mostly vintage 1960s-1980s.

Discoveries

Seriously strong debut by the new South Korean studio Sibisibi, which is a partnership between designer Jukyoung Ahn and metal craftsman Yumin Jeon. For their Flat series, the pair have combined metal frameworks with modular 3-D printed PLA panels that are hollow with wavy supports inside, making them both sturdy, faster to produce, and more visually interesting. Definitely keeping an eye on them. Another gorgeous material pairing: this new brushed-steel and fiberglass table lamp by Brooklyn designer Anna Dawson, for the gallery Rude Haus. The design extends into a ceiling and pendant lamp as well (plus leggy stools wrapped in linen), but something about the combo of that cold silver metal with the warm neutral fiberglass really does it for us. Just continually impressed by solopreneur artisanal brands like Spain’s Los Objectos Decorativos (and folks like Sophie Lou Jacobsen in the US) — founder Rosa Rubio has spent nearly ten years making and selling tabletop pieces and light fixtures that combine her impeccable design taste with handcrafting in glass, ceramic, and paper. She recently released her latest series, including the fused-glass bowl directly above that’s basically a mosaic of small bits of waste glass and a lamp that’s fully lined in crocheted raffia. Not to mention most of her lamps are under $400. Respect.

Exhibitions

Rhinoceros gallery in Rome just opened a solo show, in partnership with Galerie Kreo, of work by Ronan Bouroullec — one of the first since he and his brother Erwan dissolved their creative partnership late last year to cultivate their solo practices. Here Bouroullec is debuting new tables and candlesticks in the style of a chapel interior he designed recently in France, as well as painting-like ceramic wall compositions with aluminum frames. In case you’re planning a tour around Italy this summer, the show is up until September 8. On view now at Berry Campbell gallery in New York is a really nice show of portraits and roomscapes by the late Modernist painter Janice Biala, made between the ’40s and the ’80s. A Jewish immigrant to the US in the ’10s — and then again in the late ’30s — she was, the gallery writes, “one of the few women influencing the rising Abstract Expressionist movement in New York,” so if you didn’t know her work before, it’s certainly worth a look now.