10.12.24
Saturday Selects
Week of October 7, 2024
A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a rug collection inspired by a giant of modern art, a spare and minimal Athenian shoe shop (above), and the IRL exhibition of Mindcraft, a nearly 20-year-old franchise celebrating experimental Danish design and craft.
Interiors
In Athens, the footwear brand Esiot opened a new store earlier this year in the Exarcheia neighborhood and it pulls off the rare feat of being spare and minimal yet warm and welcoming. Esiot’s shoes and sandals are primarily made of leather and the material provided a conceptual spark for designer Nancy Katri; leather’s duality, of softness and hardness, its smooth side and its rough side, is reflected in the earthy-toned space.
Le Belvédère, a new 200-seat restaurant from the Vertigo group, takes its cues from its natural environs, near Mont Ventoux in Provence. The vision of Paris-based designer Rudy Guénaire, pencil-drawn curves add a handmade softness to the architecture while mint green accents gently contrast with neutral tones and large bay windows let in light, views, and airiness.
The Malin’s beautifully appointed co-working spaces are so inviting you might just want to settle in and knock out some deadlines — though you could also simply sit back and admire your surroundings. Their newly opened spot brings a similar vibe to East Austin, joining the Malin’s five existing locations in Nashville and New York. The Texas space features 10 private offices, 24 dedicated desks, four meeting rooms, 12 phone booths, two libraries, and a kitchen — all in a new building designed by Austin’s Chioco.
Discoveries
The new capsule collection of glassware from Gather studio’s founder Phoebe Stubbs, is made in London but channels another city and a different time: New York in the ’70s and ’80s. Stubbs’ handblown whiskey tumblers, martini glasses, and ice buckets, in smoky grays, translucent whites, and Dalmation-like spots call to mind a Manhattan full of glamour but also still some necessary grit.
Parisian rug designer Sibylle de Tavernost was invited by the estate of Fernand Léger, a giant of modern art, to delve into his archives and draw inspiration for a collection. The resulting series, Homage to Fernand Léger, takes four of Leger’s works – Les plongeurs (1943), Éléments sur fond bleu (1949), Femmes au perroquet (1951) and Cheval sur fond jaune (1953) – and translates them into gorgeous rugs where shape and color come to the fore.
Experimentation pays off for Paris-based artist-designer Côme Clérino, whose latest table lamp nods to ’60s Italian lighting design and features a cymbal-shaped porcelain shade, on a stainless steel or plaster base. It’s both glossy and highly polished yet earthy, topped with a silvery piece imprinted with a rock from Fontainebleau.
With Field Studies, his second collection for luxury rug company Marc Phillips, interior and architectural designer Jamie Bush follows up on his geological Topo series while exploring new terrain. In the Field Studies rugs, abstract planes of silk and wool are rendered in a textured, tonal, autumnal palette. The Anderson house in Topanga — rustic but refined, a bit of Brutalism mixed into wood-paneled mid-century modern — proves to be the perfect setting to bring out and complement the collection’s defining qualities.
The Naos stools, from Studio Valerie Name in collaboration with Mare Studio, debuted last month at the Athina Fair in Athens. The limited-edition series is made from solid mahogany sourced in Greece and draws inspiration from Greco-Roman architecture while imbuing it with a modern touch. The linen upholstery of each seat is dyed in colors that represent regions of Greece, including Aegean blue from the Cyclades, olive green from Pelion, and red from the Cretan Knossos.
Exhibitions
Since 2008, the Mindcraft Project has annually highlighted experimental Danish design and craft. This year, the platform, led by Copenhagen Design Agency, takes a physical form along with a digital one – an exhibition of 10 projects is on view at Kvadrat’s Copenhagen showroom through October 25th. Designers include Akiko Ken Made, Alexander Kirkeby, Frederik Gustav, Lærke Ryom, Marie Holst, Morten Løbner Espersen, Sigurd Nis Schelde, Sofie Østerby, Stine Mikkelsen, and Victor Miklos. Curated by Danish designer Maria Bruun, one particular focus of the show is how to protect and preserve craft within the larger framework of production.
Design studio Sunfish NYC’s second collaboration with clothing designer Lyle McGraw and the Olderbrother store in LA is a collection of clothing and furniture rooted in taking things apart and putting them back together in new, reinterpreted ways – with little going to waste. Sunfish NYC’s pieces are made of centuries-old redwood sourced from a barn in Northern California and include a slab coffee table, a room divider with hand-painted flowers, a lounge chair with a hand-dyed indigo seat, and an exaggeratedly tall high back, caned chair. At Olderbrother in Venice through November 6th.
This past summer, the Secular show at Temple Projects, which inhabits a formerly abandoned church from 1865 in East-Bolton, Quebec, offered a chance for Canadian and American artists and designers to create outside of their usual parameters. The exhibition included experimental works from Malcolm Majer (bottom photo), Aymuyia, Jean-Michel Gadoua, Rachel Bussin-Studio Kiff, Lauren Goodman, Edith Sevigny-Martel, Will Choui, Simon Johns, Hannah Bigeleisen, Alexandre Joncas, Kin & Company (middle photo), Olivier Bonnard, and Steven Bukowski.