A weekly recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a renovated 1920s mansion available for rent in Paris, the latest in stained glass as a furniture material, and one Brooklyn designer’s attempt to bring back flatware manufacturing in America.

Interiors

In renovating Villa Junot, a 1920s mansion in Montmartre — the first Parisian location for Iconic House, which offers private home rentals in France — interior design studio Claves brought equal parts imagination and reverence to the project. Claves, founded by Laure Gravier and Soizic Fougeront, restored original features, like the exquisite mosaics in the bathroom, while layering in contemporary Art Deco-inspired design and dreamlike Surrealist touches: trompe l’oeil, theatrical drapery, an exploration of scale and perspective, astrological and alchemical motifs, and trippy stripes. There’s a musicality here, too: wrought iron details are inspired by the bass clef symbol, fitting for the former home of composer André Mauprey. Photos © Alice Mesguich

Jonathan Stene et Elena Alexopoulos of Greek-French architecture and design studio Stene Alexopoulos bring a bit of Carlo Scarpa, a bit of Brutalism, and whole lot of elegance to their renovation of a 1940s Parisian apartment. Pairing textured neutrals with smooth walnut or cool green marble — in the form of a massive bench, an insert in the poured-onsite concrete dining table, and cladding in the kitchen and bathroom – the beauty is in the details. Photos © Clément Gérard

The latest phase of the stunning, multi-part renovation of Villa Medici includes a half dozen guestrooms and two citrus gardens on the Renaissance-era estate, home to the French Academy in Rome. In 2022, Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi refurbished the reception salons and in 2023, India Mahdavi refreshed the historic rooms. Now, six architectural and design teams have updated the guestrooms, which served as artist studios in the 19th century, and are available for short-term stays. Retaining their original coffered wooden ceilings and herringbone brick floors, each space has been distinctly made over. Here, the apartment-workshops of Le Corbusier and Brancusi inspired Sabourin Costes and Estampille 52 to create the calming yet invigorating Isola room.

When two talented design workers, Emily Lindberg of Emily Lindberg Design and Wu Hanyen of Work in Use bring their skills to bear on their own domestic space, you can expect winning results. In renovating their 1870s house in Providence, Rhode Island, with help from creative friends, Lindberg and Hanyen followed a course that respected the home’s Victorian origins while bringing it up to date, making considered, expert use of color and material — particularly tile — to render it homey, warm, and modern. Photos © Eric Petschek

Discoveries

Spanish designer Alberto Sánchez, co-founder of MUT Design studio in Valenica, recently launched a new solo project called Berto, presenting the Facetas collection at Lisbon design week last month. Sanchez delved into the 19th-century Tiffany stained-glass technique, working with artisan Fernando Silva, to create contemporary Tetris-like forms, including a mesmerizing blue side table and lighting with a golden glow. He likens the combination of precision and spontaneity to sketches made in glass.

LA-based Caleb Engstrom, of Rest Energy, roots his practice in material exploration and the tension of contrasting forces. With the DRY KISS chair (DRY KISS: Don’t Repeat Yourself, Keep It Simple Stupid) strict linearity gives way to gentle curves. Engstrom debuted the chair in maple plywood with a white lacquer finish at LA art week earlier this year, while a low back version, the limited-edition Special Damages chair, in redwood burl and eggshells (!) was on view at a Jonald Dudd group show in May. We’ve just added the maple version above to our Sight Unseen Collection here!

Earlier this month, Manhattan-based interior designer Clive Lonstein launched Glass, his first collection with StudioTwentySeven. The series of cast-glass furniture features eight limited edition pieces. The thick, textured slabs of these forms balance a substantial presence with a translucent lightness, but there’s something especially sultry about the low-slung Glass 003 table in Bronze Topaz.

With the Element bed, Los Angeles-based Kalon produced a timeless piece that still feels fresh, bringing thoughtful details to the minimalist simplicity of brushed aluminum and Douglas Fir. Now they’re expanding the Element collection with new case goods: a floating credenza, side table, and console that beautifully contrast metal with wood and weightlessness with solidity. These will also be for sale via Sight Unseen in the coming weeks!

ForksPlus, a new venture from Brooklyn designer Kelsey Fairhurst, is on something of a flatware mission: “With only one major flatware manufacturer left in the U.S., Forks Plus is an attempt to understand what it means to make flatware independently—from start to finish, and at a small scale.” Made in Brooklyn in limited runs or via preorders, ForksPlus currently offers super-cute 5-, 3-, or 2-piece stainless sets for setting a table and a portable, on-the-go acrylic fork with a removable silicone sleeve. Photo © Gregory Wikstrom

New rugs from Australian design studio Tigmi go all in on tactility. Tigmi’s Cashmere collection, made of a blend of cashmere and New Zealand wool, is handloomed with a dense 200-knot count in neutral solids like Ivory, Wheat, Camel, and Burnt Caramel, finished with woven trim. Their Sahara and Dune carpets, of Afghan wool, highlight subtle tonal texture, as does the hand-knotted Cesca featuring a wicker weave pattern.

Exhibitions

Earlier this month, the Pallas gallery in San Francisco presented Litanies, a solo show of furniture and sculptural objects by Berkeley-based Rafi Ajl. As the show’s name suggests, these works have to do with recitation and repetition but also the way patterns and logic can be broken up, reimagined and reworked into something new. In these pieces, the rigor of right angles and rectilinear grids are disrupted and embellished in some way, injected with a kind of organic quality. A blocky aluminum chair, for example, acquires a certain mysterious allure when it meets felt, silk, and wax.

On a Comfortable Sofa Dreamed — a new exhibition at Superhouse, guest curated (a first for the gallery) by Homan Rajai and Elena Dendiberia of San Francisco-based StudioAHEAD — explores the intersection of art, architecture, and home as expressed through the relationship between artist and patron or designer and collector. It’s a complex connection, at once intimate and expansive, transactional yet lasting. The prompt for the show’s six artists, three from Northern California and three from the East Coast: How might your work respond to the architecture of a fictional home? The responding works include a wall of leaning puff pastry by Gay Outlaw, a tiered steel candelabra by Nico Corona, a sculptural ceramic mantel-like piece by Ben Peterson, a three-in-one reading nook, step stool, and lamp from Queens-based duo Ficus Interfaith, ornamental stoneware moldings from Ellen Pong, and a woven and embroidered fiber work from Maris Van Vlack. Up through August 2. Photos © Matthew Gordon