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Leopard-Print Rugs and Wood-Paneled Walls Make This Shop Whimsical But Grounded

The sustainable French fashion brand Balzac recently opened a Lyon flagship designed by the Paris interiors firm Batiik.

The French interiors duo Batiik — run by Rebecca Benichou and Florence Jallet, whose furniture collection we featured a few years back — recently completed a flagship in Lyon, France, for the sustainable fashion brand Balzac. And while it’s Batiik’s first retail project, the women make it look effortless. Benichou and Jallet drew on their residential experience as well as Balzac’s well-defined brand book to create an intimate, textural space: Think trad area rugs atop wall-to-wall leopard-print carpet, the same one they used to perfect effect in this Paris flat. Plus striped curtains, sofa skirts, and fabric-covered ceilings; a glossy tiled cash desk; ceramic-framed mirrors; vintage furniture accents (including this wavy rattan number I’m now obsessed with); and wood-paneled walls. Perhaps the piece de resistance is a fanciful, Henry Darger–esque ceiling mural, painted by the Marseille-based artist Jacques Merle. It’s a space that leans on the idea of boutique-as-home without veering too far into pastiche, not forgetting that, in the end, you’re in the space to dépenser with aplomb. 

An Experimental Festival in Paris Explores the Intersection of Music and Design

(Top) At Contributions in Paris, works by Sylvia Corrette and Luna Paiva, photos by DePasquale Maffini; (bottom) works by Pauline Espanron and Juliette Teste, photos by Alexandre Onimus

Contributions, the biennial design festival founded by Anna Caradeuc and Élise Daunay, returned for its second edition last week, unfolding across five jewel-box venues in Paris. Four of the five exhibitions featured sonic pieces composed in response to the works on view, emphasizing the relationship between design and music and creating an extra-textural layer of meaning. Emily Thurman — whose work we’re featuring elsewhere in this newsletter — exhibited two new pieces, each adorned with a string of bells, alongside an original composition from Kansas City–based musician Kevin Morby; Nifemi Marcus-Bello, exhibiting in Paris for the first time, showed his M2 shelf fitted with a speaker, from which poured the music of Brazilian musician Rodrigo Amarante.

But our two favorite exhibitions were group efforts. Next to Us brought together 1980s-era vintage pieces, including a neo-Baroque throne by the French designer Sylvia Corrette, alongside contemporary works by Valerie Name Bolaño, Jeanne Tresvaux du Fraval, and the artist Luna Paiva. Elsewhere, the Normandy-based Pauline Esparon debuted translucent works made using Dabgar — a centuries-old Pakistani craft, in which animal skin scraps are transformed into translucent, stone-like sheets using only their natural collagen — alongside whimsical ceramics by Juliette Teste, with a soundscape composed by Panamenian-Mexican musician Michelle Blades.

A Utah Residence Inspired By the Canyons At Its Doorstep

Emily Thurman’s top-tier furniture selections for her first residential interior include a prototype fan chair by the late Utah designer Robert Bliss (left) and a paper lamp by Jorge Kilzi. Photos: Austin Leis

The Salt Lake City–based designer Emily Thurman burst onto the scene in May of this year with her material-rich, collaborative furniture line Hundo, then followed it up with an appearance at this fall’s Collectible fair in New York. Now come photos of Thurman’s first residential interior, and it’s clear the designer is a force. For the Utah residence, Thurman pulled a color story from nearby canyons, touring the landscape of Capitol Reef National Park; those red rock tones now appear in pieces like a custom lacquered credenza, a silk Ruemmler pendant that hangs above the coffee table, and even in the teak wood slats of the Lady Murasaki Fan chair prototype, designed by the late Utah designer and Black Mountain College alum Robert Bliss. Plenty of Thurman’s contemporaries are on view as well, including the Brooklyn woodworker Luke Malaney, who contributed an entryway bench, and Utah expats Astraeus Clarke, whose Alpine floor lamp stands in the corner of the bedroom. French and Italian vintage as well as several custom pieces by Thurman herself complete the scene, weaving a narrative throughline of craft.

Why Is Everybody Suddenly Making Decorative Boxes?

HYZ, a new tableware brand that turns trinket boxes and trays into truly sculptural objects

Perhaps it’s the Art Deco 100th anniversary of it all, but considering this is the second decorative box we’ve featured this month — the first being TTMM’s sweet walnut and aluminum Digit Boxes — there’s clearly something in the air. These particular pieces are by Aleksandra Hyz, an interior architect and designer who collaborated with metalsmith Dawid Adamczyk on the chicest card holders, boxes, trays, and candleholders in hammered steel and stained wood. (There’s also another, more modernist-styled collection inspired by Scarpa and titled Carlo.) For her new line of sculptural tableware, Hyz drew inspiration from frequent visits to the flea market and her fascination with small boxes and containers, but in this resurgence, we’re most reminded of the work of Line Vautrin, queen of decorative boxes, whose work remains as current and vital today as it ever was. (Also we might all be sleeping on “Art Deco boxes” as a LiveAuctioneers search term?)

Madeline Coven’s Pewter Sconces Are Meant to Look Like the Moon

Each sconce in Madeline Coven’s Crater series is made by pouring sheets of pewter into a tray, manipulating the metal as it cools to create a lunar texture. Photos: Marco Galloway

It’s no secret that pewter is one of my abiding passions in life. (I’ll actually be on a panel about it next week, see News for more!) I love pewter’s finish so much; it’s like the metal is never trying too hard. The New York designer Madeline Coven, who has a show up in the Library at Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery through November 15, seems to agree. The exhibition consists of a variety of sconces and drawer pulls that feature pewter as either a star or a supporting player: irregular knobs carved from cuttlefish bone and cast in pewter; long mahogany cabinet pulls inlaid with tiny pewter dots; sconces whose bumpy surfaces are meant to recall the silvery craters of the moon; lights where the pewter retains the gridded texture of burlap; or sconces where the pewter is paired with fiberglass, resin, and walnut in an otherworldly jumble. It’s beautiful, celestial work, and it makes us excited to see what she does next.

Editor’s List

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The new Kloris collection of vases was designed by ceramicist Danny Kaplan in collaboration with Alex Crowder of Field Studies Flora, who had looked in vain for taller vessels with wider mouths for her wild, voluminous bouquets. We’re partial to this baby blue hue.

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An internet rabbit hole led me to the Kamm Teapot Foundation, which was founded by an LA couple and has in its archives more than 17,000 teapots, organized by material — ceramic, metal, glass, wood, and textiles among them. I was struck by how many of the silver pots from the 20th century were by German women whose names have been almost forgotten in the postwar era, including Paula Straus, who died at Auschwitz, and Emmy Roth, who designed this silver and ivory infuser in the 1920s but was pushed out of Germany following the rise of the Nazis. There’s no tourable physical space as far as I can tell, but it’s worth a look online.

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There’s something slightly unhinged about buying a blown-glass hook — especially one as bulbous as this one — but I think we can all assume these aren’t for hanging your teen’s full-to-bursting backpack. Designed by Vaulot & Dyèvre for La Petite Friture, the Bubble hook would be a nice addition to your entryway for hanging up… your dog leash? An empty crossbody purse? A sheer anorak?

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It came to my attention this week that the fancy toilet brand Trone has now branched out into other bathroom accessories, including a toilet paper holder, a trash can, and the most beautiful toilet brush in existence called, lol, the Sceptre. It costs 230 Euros, so if you’re thinking of buying it, it’s safe to say you already consider yourself royalty.

News

India Mahdavi covered every inch of this former car repair shop with bespoke, rose-patterned fabric for the We Are Ona pop-up at Art Basel Paris.

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Do we like the immersive, rose-bedecked environment India Mahdavi created for the We Are Ona dinner pop-up during Art Basel in Paris (above)? I’m honestly on the fence, but I do appreciate Mahdavi’s commitment to a theme, and it would have been fun to see it in person. Remember seeing Mahdavi’s all-pink interior for Sketch London in 2014, the height of millennial pink? You were like “inject this into my veins.”
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Speaking of pewter, next Wednesday, November 5, at 6:30PM I’ll be on a panel at Salon 94 in New York, talking about pewter’s enduring allure. Called A Matter of Tenn, the panel is presented by the Swedish brand Svenskt Tenn and will be moderated by Spencer Bailey of Slowdown Studio. RSVP here!
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The designer/audiophile demographic overlap is strong, so you might be interested to know that WAF Audio, the speaker brand founded by designer Zoë Mowat, recently released SP-02, its second product, a more colorful, petite speaker that fits on a bookshelf or comes with an optional, 15-inch riser for floor placement. Still sounds dope.
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The dinner party store Big Night continues to expand, opening its third New York location on the Upper East Side earlier this month. If I were a resident of Los Angeles, I might be getting ready to spill big money on those Dusen Dusen oven mitts and Sabre serving sets in person…

Jobs

Sarah Sherman Samuel is looking for a gallery and studio manager to be based in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Swell Studio is seeking an entry level fabricator (woodworking is a must) to join their team in Saugerties, New York

Landed Interiors, which specializes in historic preservation, is seeking an intermediate interior designer to join their New York team

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