
05.11.24
Saturday Selects
Week of May 6, 2024
A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: pale green and stainless steel is the new butter yellow and stainless steel; an exhibition devoted to the vicissitudes of wood; and new rugs from everyone’s favorite LA sister-run brand, Block Shop.
Interiors
We’ve been keeping an eye on the Los Angeles–based interior and furniture designer Dean Levin of 22RE, and no one is more surprised than us how much the studio has made us love the interior of a golf store in Miami. The studio — which gets its name from a popular Toyota truck engine from the ’80s — has a penchant for monomaterials, and this particular Malbon boutique gets its distinct look from pale green stucco covering the walled surfaces, stainless steel furnishings and fittings, and an aluminum open-cell grid ceiling. Photos by Erik Stackpole
Speaking of pale green and stainless steel, it makes another winning appearance in the debut project by Tutto Bene, a new design studio from Felizia Berchtold and Oskar Kohnen. Called Nightingales and located in Mayfair, London, it’s a café that reimagines the classic European Kaffeehaus in contemporary materials. The space features fluted walls; draped curtains; an installation of spinning, pleated paper chandeliers produced by the Austrian heritage brand Kalmar; a skirted wait station; a stainless steel bar; and deep green cement tiles. The last photo, of a stainless steel toilet, is from another of Tutto Bene’s projects, the Cubitts store in NYC, and frankly we were too obsessed to leave it on the cutting room floor! Photos by Ludovic Balay
Any design-adjacent New Yorker who’s ever been to a party at Superhouse will recognize the space that Old Jewelry now inhabits. The vintage jewelry store run by Sarah Burns was formerly around the corner but has now doubled its space — all the better to feature the shop’s new Showcase program of contemporary designers. (The first is by Paris-based artist Zoé Mohm and was inspired by comic books, New York City and the tassels and fringe of the 1920s.) We also love the color palette and details here, including vintage lamps and mirrors, and a beaded aluminum curtain leading to the stock room.
Exhibitions
Clemens Schmidberger
Lisa Ertel & Jannis Zell
Jonas Lutz
Jakob Niemann
Marte Mei Van Haaster
Joseph Walsh
Alison Malouf
Wood Land, the newest exhibition at everyone’s favorite Austrian castle Schloss Hollenegg, focuses on wood as a symbol and beacon of hope for sustainability. Each object presented is also an excuse to discuss themes such as global warming, forest management and sustainable wood production; some of our favorite pieces include Jonas Lutz’s Feral Creatures — animal-inspired furniture shaped from branches from a fallen plane tree on the castle’s property — and Alison Malouf’s diagonal take on a spruce fence.
Discoveries
After 10 years in a second-floor space on Canal, the New York gallery Colony has moved to a Tribeca storefront to celebrate a decade in business. The new space features work by old standbys, such as Bec Brittain and Grain, as well as newer designers to Colony’s program, including BZIPPY and Sarah Sherman Samuel, whose gridded marble coffee table is probably our favorite piece right now. Colony founder Jean Lin has also curated a selection of vintage objects — including the fish! — that will be on view alongside the designer objects.
Last year, we presented an interior by French designer whose staircase went kind of viral; now the designer is presenting “Croisière” his first furniture collection in collaboration with Monde Singulier, inspired by everything from Bauhaus, to the first long-haul aircraft, to Venetian waterbuses. Love.
Jute is always recommended for its durability and neutral adaptability, but somehow, the sister-run LA textiles brand Block Shop’s made jute fun in their new series of patterned rugs. The wavy black Trellis rug in particular was originally designed for Block Shop’s LA flagship, but there were so many customer requests for it, it’s now in permanent rotation.
We don’t typically recommend podcasts — but then again, there are only a few great ones in the design space. Now in its second season, In the Making by Adobe — which explores the challenges and rewards of working as a creator — is one of them. The first season chatted with ilovecreatives founder Puno about pivoting from full-time employment to solo entrepreneurship and Yowie founder Shannon Maldonado on how to holistically think about a brand — both digitally and IRL. The newest season started last month and features another friend of Sight Unseen: Michael Ventura on how creating with empathy can change your life. Episodes air every other week wherever you get your podcasts!