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The Internet’s Favorite Furniture Brand Opens a Flagship in Sydney

Ellison Studios’ new permanent flagship in Sydney features the brand’s own designs plus those of several local studios. Photos: Anson Smart

A year ago, Australian furniture brand Ellison Studios opened a showroom and events space in Sydney and filled it with their greatest hits, plus vintage accents like an original 1970s stereo by Dieter Rams for Braun. But despite its ambitious interior, it was only ever meant to be temporary — hence its name, The Rental. Founder Leigh McKeown envisioned it as an experiment on how the 8-year-old brand would use a physical space, and how much its fans, from interior designers to local influencers, would take advantage of it. After a successful 6-month run, McKeown and his team were finally convinced to put down real roots, and this month they’re opening the doors to a much bigger permanent public-facing space and leadership headquarters in Sydney’s design district that also includes a dedicated private designer suite for trade clients.

Spanning 7,000 square feet and two floors, the HQ is marked by a monumental central glass-brick staircase, accessories by local brands like Studio Henry Wilson and Volker Haug, and a towering 13-foot palm tree in the reception area that heralds the brand’s signature melding of high-design forms with a laid-back, beachy vibe. McKeown worked with Joseph Gardner, William McRoberts, and JForm on the project’s design and construction, which, he says, strikes “the perfect balance between logic and magic.”

Gallery Folly’s Eclectic Mix Makes it the Vintage Source Manhattan Was Missing

The last and only time I visited a French antiques market was probably 15 years ago, and yet when I first saw the inaugural collection of Gallery Folly — New York’s latest purveyor of bygone collectible furniture, which opened its doors yesterday in Chelsea — my mind conjured some idealized version of Les Puces, bursting with Roger Capron tables, wicker, and handmade wooden furniture salvaged from some upper-class country estate. That may be the vibe, but upon closer inspection the gallery’s assortment is actually a little more eclectic, encompassing pieces by mid-century Scandis like Axel Einar Hjorth and Oscar Nilsson, plus Josef Hoffmann bowls, Italian mirrors, early 2000s sconces by Herve Van Der Straeten, and contemporary ceramics by New York’s Studio Binat, who produce with master artisans in Mexico. Equally eclectic are the resumes of the pair behind Gallery Folly: Conor Burke was a market editor at Australia’s Vogue Living before he became a creative director and interior designer, while Elizabeth Cutler co-founded SoulCycle (!) and has a personal interest in ceramics and painting. It’s honestly just so nice to have a new vintage source to visit — and send out-of-towners to — in Manhattan, where there are surprisingly few with such thoughtful curation.

Royal Copenhagen’s New Creative Director Wants You to Mix, Not Match

In June, I traveled to 3 Days of Design with Royal Copenhagen to help celebrate the porcelain brand’s 250th anniversary. The most exciting part of the trip was high tea at the home of its new creative director Jasper Toron Neilsen — previously a menswear designer at Burberry, Tom Ford, Givenchy, and others — where we got a sneak peek of his first attempt at mining the brand’s vast archives to push its aesthetic in new directions. The full collection launched earlier this month, and while it primarily revolves around Royal Copenhagen’s original Blue Fluted pattern from 1775, Neilsen has reissued specific pieces (like a very cute shell dish), and collaged together others (into totemic centerpieces dotted with little blue snails), in service of a very contemporary idea: “It used to be that you were aiming to have 12 of everything, so you could set these [perfectly matching] tables,” he says. “Now people are more interested in showing their personality through a table setting that’s more curated.”

So while the Heritage Explored line also includes Royal Copenhagen’s first-ever table linens and glass water goblets — so you could go for the full-on look if you wanted to — the idea was to make pieces that would slip right into the eclectic, maximalist tablescapes we all want now, where vintage, heritage, and other special pieces from your collection can come together in one glorious jumble.

Georgina Davies Makes Low-Cost MDF Look Like High Design

The MDF console from Georgina Davies’s Undressed collection stands on three Art Deco–style legs. Photos: Leif Prenzlau

Every once in a while we get an interesting type of submission; a project that, technically speaking, isn’t particularly groundbreaking, yet is somehow much more than the sum of its parts, sometimes for reasons we can’t even put our finger on. The latest collection from Australian furniture and interior designer Georgina Davies is one of these projects. Called Undressed, it comprises three pieces — a bookshelf, a nightstand, and a console table — made from MDF that’s been consciously elevated in a few simple ways. First, through its Art Deco-ish forms, most compelling being the three-legged console above. Second, through its Jean Dubuffet-esque painted edges. And third, through its French-polished finish, which makes it look a little more like its expensive cousin, burl. Davies, like many designers, has a fascination with transforming industrial materials, but her interventions are often subtle — case in point, this aluminum table with the perfect book nook — which makes all the difference.

A New Salvino Marsura Retrospective Celebrates the Softer Side of Brutalism

Works in steel and iron made by the late Treviso sculptor Salvino Marsura from the 1980s through the 2000s. Photos: Genevieve Lutkin and Gareth Hacker

One of the best things I saw at the Milan fair this past April was a series of Brutalist-style iron and steel sculptures on view both in the garden at Alcova’s Villa Borsani show and in an exhibition at the studio of design duo Tutto Bene. Created by the late Italian sculptor Salvino Marsura — whose estate was recently acquired by London gallery Béton Brut — I knew they heralded a larger show to come this fall. I did not, however, realize just how epic that show would be. Opening this coming weekend at Béton Brut’s permanent space in Hackney Wick, during the London Design Festival, the retrospective spans six decades of Marsura’s work, and includes pieces like a loopy room divider, a floor lamp resembling a giant tulip-slash-cornstalk, several craggy chandeliers, and an abstract stepladder with a dramatic swooping top. For those who associate object-scale Brutalism primarily with Paul Evans, Marsura’s work is a nice surprise, a somehow more delicate and organic take on the movement’s raw, flame-forged forms.

Editor’s List

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT:
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The French studio Maison Errance — run by Sarah Iannarella — makes all sorts of small objects in all sorts of materials, but this 3D printed piece is the showstopper: she makes a larger version that’s a table lamp, and a shrunken version that’s an egg cup. I’d use both!
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I didn’t look too closely at this lamp, submitted by a French-Japanese studio based in London called Akasaki & Vanhuyse, until I read the fascinating description — it’s made of stacked resin ring handles from a Japanese metro train that was decommissioned in 2023; 1,400 of them turned into 150 limited-edition lamps.
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All of my picks this week were going to be new lamps until I saw this stool, which I couldn’t bear to leave out. It’s from Chris Wolston’s new show at The Future Perfect in New York, and pairs a rough-hewn aluminum frame with a leafy upholstered cushion. The show also features amazing tapestries designed by Wolston and produced in Morocco by Beni Rugs.
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I like how the Ghost lamp by Natalie Tischler is so industrial — it’s made from natural latex rubber, fish hooks, and polished steel — yet sensual at the same time, thanks to the latex’s pretty butter color and subtle shine. Photo by Adam Kremer.
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News

Casa Josephine’s latest project, featured this month in World of Interiors, is a high-drama apartment in Madrid lined in marble and mirror. Photo: Pablo Zamora

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Drooling over this 2,000 sqft Casa Josephine apartment in Madrid featured in World of Interiors this month, which was apparently a “shell devoid of anything” before the studio drenched it in sumptuous materials like velvet, marble, and mirror. A reminder of what’s possible with even the saddest white box (if you have ample budget!).
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For his apartment in Melbourne, Australian fashion stylist Elliot Garnaut tag-teamed the interiors with designer Alicia Racovolis and design gallery Oigåll Projects, who did a bang-up job with the art and object styling.
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There’s an auction of Esprit’s Ettore Sottsass store fixtures going on right now in Germany, with online biddding — can’t discern much about it but there are 19 lots ranging from vitrines to room dividers to lamps to lounge chairs.
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If you’re out in SF between now and December, architect Anand Sheth has set up a temporary store in the Mission filled with objects from California designers, including Nico Corona and Entler Studio.
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