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A Cinematic New Hotel Lands in Stockholm

For a new aparthotel in Stockholm, Note Design Studio refreshed the interior of a 1960s-era low-rise with color-blocked walls, vintage Swedish tapestries, and custom storage. Photos: Riikka Kantinkoski

When we return to Stockholm in February for the annual furniture fair, we’ll be refreshing Sight Unseen’s official and excellent guide to the Swedish capital with the best places to stay, eat, drink, visit, and shop. But we already have one new contender: The Finnish hospitality company Bob W recently opened its first Stockholm property inside a Functionalist 1967 concrete low-rise, its interiors preserved and elevated by Note Design Studio. The apartment hotel features 54 studios, but each one had a different size and shape at the outset; to pull everything together, Note created a collection of beds, seating, kitchens, and storage that could thread throughout, with cabinet and drawer pulls shaped like blocky, ink-stained buttons. Monochromatic corridors lined with old Swedish tapestries link the rooms, and in the common spaces, vintage furniture, high-gloss tile, and contemporary works like a modular sofa — designed by Note for Lammhults — create a distinctly cinematic mood. As Bob W co-founder Niko Karstikko put it: “The design has a Kaurismäki ambiance; you wonder where the guy with the cigarette is.”

This Renovated 19th-Century Guest House is a Preview of Things to Come

The new interiors studio Betyle’s ingenious solution for thick walls in this 19th-century outbuilding? An internal wooden framework that’s both decorative and functional. Photos: Mathilde Hiley

Based between Marseille and Paris, Betyle is a new interiors firm led by Nicolas Cazenave de la Roche and Carla Romano, and their first interior is the renovation of an early 19th-century outbuilding in the south of France (top of post and above). A hybrid office and guest room, the space features — say it with me now — glass bricks and stainless steel, and its thick walls are covered with a plywood sheath that stretches almost to the ceiling. The wooden framework is both functional and decorative; notched into the corners where two panels meet are repurposed vintage farm hooks, a reminder of the space’s past life alongside a bathroom cabinet inspired by cattle feed bunks. The furniture assortment here — much of it sourced from Memori Studio, who also designed the terracotta sconces — is a dream: skirted night tables, a 1930s desk lamp with silk fringe, an Enzo Mari bowl, and an Inox and glass desk perched on legs that resemble two airships doing a nosedive. A fabric lamp coated in resin was designed by Betyle’s two founders, and the sum of it all makes us eager to see what these two do next.

Smoky Casinos and Venetian Yachts Inspired Astraeus Clarke’s Glam New Furniture Collection

Among the pieces in the first-ever furniture collection from Astraeus Clarke: a 10-foot-long mahogany dining table, “sexy disco cubes,” and a floor-length mirror with ball feet and an oyster lacquered frame.  

Last week, the downtown New York duo Astraeus Clarke launched the studio’s first ever furniture collection with a casino night at their glamorous, velvet-lined Chinatown showroom. I can’t imagine a better use for their 10-foot-long lacquered mahogany dining table than a high-stakes blackjack game (if by high stakes you mean dozens of design people vying to win one of Astraeus’s glitzy new vases or smoke trays). But with its polished steel trim and technical precision, the table could fit into any number of scenarios, including bitchy executive office, yacht on its way to the Biennale, or dining salon of a couple who aspire to be the modern-day George and Bertha Russell. Astraeus Clarke founders Jacob and Chelsie Starley were inspired by things like old Hollywood and the sculpted bumpers of vintage sports cars, and the collection, called Vesper, is rounded out by a floor-length mirror on ball-shaped feet and what one partygoer referred to as “sexy disco cubes,” upholstered in shearlings, velvets and tartans and fastened to their bases with star-shaped snaps. With Vesper, the studio — which previously made only lighting — sets its course in a new direction, where one can imagine a whole world informed by these pieces. “This is where the vision widens,” says Chelsie. 

Channeling Your Inner Gemini at NYC’s Newest Art Fair

At Duet, a new art fair exploring the concept of duality, Galerie Sardine presented works by the London artist Anthony Banks that appear to be, quite literally, two paintings in one.

Now that Independent, Armory, Collectible, and New York Fashion Week all collide at the beginning of September, there’s no escaping a swift and bracing return from summer. But a new show at WSA, curated by Kyle DeWoody and Zoe Lukov, this year offered a softer landing. “Duet” gave galleries the chance to pair two thematically similar artists, asking them to explore the concept of duality through devices like twins or reflections. Two of our favorite presentations showed, ironically, side-by-side: Tiwa Gallery presented new, spiraling lamps by James Cherryalongside paintings by Daniel Long, and the Amagansett-based Galerie Sardine showed sculptures by Jenna Kaës surrounded by paintings from the London artist Anthony Banks. Banks, writes Sardine founder Valentina Akerman, “deliberately positions his work on ‘contested borderlines’ — urban and pastoral, figurative and abstract — finding the tension in these fault lines where the most vital energy occurs.” For Duet, Banks made paintings that appear to be, quite literally, two canvases in one, their abstract bases foregrounding more figurative motifs such as birds, flowers, and buildings. Discordant in a good way.

The Best Things We Saw at the 2025 Collectible Design Fair

Top: Rituals of Adornment by Llewellyn Chupin; bottom: In Praise of Folly, a curated exhibition by Hannah Martin with sceneography by Cat Snodgrass. 

The Brussels-based Collectible fair wrapped its second New York outing last week, and while you’ll have to head to Instagram to see our top 10 in full, there are a few presentations that we can’t stop thinking about even a week on. The first was Hannah Martin’s curated show, “In Praise of Folly,” with scenography by Cat Snodgrass and a china-blue wallpaper specially commissioned from Wallpaper Projects, flecked with visual non sequiturs like Jell-O molds and spilled milk. This exhibition had almost too many superfluously ornamental favorites to count: Thomas Yang’s cherry side table studded with sterling silver flowers; Tara McCauley’s spaghetti vongole–inspired lamp, its shade ribbed with linguine and hung with parsley-shaped Shrinky Dinks; Soft Skills’ Brutalist tulipière. Another presentation we loved was Llewellyn Chupin’s Rituals of Adornment series, which featured stark aluminum forms softened by elements like silk draping, platinum chains, and pearls. Lastly, the recent RISD grad Jesse Groom — whose Cicatrix cabinet we showed in our Collectible presentation last year — has been perfecting his technique of hand-welding aluminum beads, and his flower-shaped floor lamp was almost unbearably poetic. Head to our IG to see more.

Editor’s List

Clockwise, from top left

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I’ve had this Postmodern German lounge chair from the London dealer Spazio Leone open in my tabs for weeks. I keep returning to it to try to figure out what’s happening, material-wise, but also just because I’m obsessed with it. It looks like the chicest crumpled brown bag in existence but it also reminds me of this Droog piece from 2000, which arrived to you as a shiny steel cube and a sledgehammer; you had to smash the hell out of it in order to get it into the shape of a seat. Shall we bring back anger management as a furniture design category?

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We featured Waka Waka’s collection for Karimoku when it launched in Japan earlier this year but somehow we missed this Bi-Level Block table, whose lacquered red channels the work of another of our favorite Japanese designers.

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Perhaps when I go back to Stockholm I’ll also pick up some of this excellently designed Swedish soap (woman-owned, recycled packaging). We love an unhinged graphic treatment on a tiny canvas!

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I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Hay vase I didn’t like (my pink Moroccan is going strong) but I appreciate the simplicity/neo-Victorian vibes of this one a lot.

News

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This Milk Decoration article on a recent Sophie Dries renovation is lovely but my jaw actually dropped to the floor when I saw this fireplace (above), which was apparently built on-site in the ‘80s by Philolaos, a friend of the art-collecting couple. The article glosses over this detail, but I went on a Philolaos deep dive. The Greek sculptor worked often with architects and mainly in steel, and you absolutely must take a look at this piece on the house he built for his family, complete with stainless-steel TV unit. 

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While scrolling LiveAuctioneers the other night, I came across this Henning Koppel Georg Jensen 992 pitcher in sterling silver selling for north of $16,000. (A relative steal, since new, it’s $22K?)  Then last week I got an email in my inbox announcing two new Koppel-designed pieces, originally designed in 1962 and 1975, were being released in mirror-polished steel, selling for around $325 a piece. Their visual language —  a bulbous tummy accompanied by a swooping handle (the original pitcher is commonly known as the Pregnant Duck) — is incredibly similar; only the material and the provenance create such a gap in value and worth. The upshot? A-B-C-V — Always Be Checking your Vintage! Turn that shit over and verify the material, maybe you’ll find a silver piece from someone who doesn’t know its worth?

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For her SS26 collection, which debuted this weekend at the Cooper-Hewitt museum, fashion designer Ulla Johnson took inspiration from one of our favorite Abstract Expressionist painters, Helen Frankenthaler. Many of the silhouettes and details in collection are not for me, but I loved this simple U-neck tank dress as well as the flowy sheath paired with a diaphanous jacket, both of which rework the color-field motif from Frankenthaler’s 1973 painting, Nature Abhors a Vacuum.

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Sarah Sherman Samuel’s new Lulu & Georgia collection includes an oak armoire that, with its vertical row of circular knobs and “pockets,” is meant to resemble a button-down shirt. Weirdly, the product description doesn’t acknowledge this, referring to it only as a “formal silhouette,” but we appreciate Samuel injecting a bit of weirdness into a relatively traditional company. (How to Live With Objects fans might recognize that this piece is similar to the epic tuxedo cabinet from our book!)

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