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EJR Barnes Inspires Pure Longing With His Screens, Shark Chairs, and Cast-Glass Tables

GSL Gallery’s recent Parisian solo show of furniture and lighting by EJR Barnes included rugs made with Shame Studios, a monumental chaise longue, and a double-sided room divider made with de Gournay.

Two weeks ago, I took an extra-long Uber ride to the far northeast corner of Paris to catch the very last two hours of EJR Barnes’s latest solo show, “The Second Arrangement,” in what also happened to be the very last two hours of GSL Gallery’s residency in that particular loft space. I was grateful that I made it, just under the wire, because the show was exemplary of what I have always said about Barnes, since we began featuring his work in 2019: Every piece he makes is a banger. I mean that quite literally — he has never made an object that I didn’t think possessed the ineffable, inexplicable quality of being somehow exactly right. I long for his objects, tbh. If you’ve followed Barnes’s career so far you might know that he’s completely self-taught, having dropped out of art school to work in music before turning to design, but that right-ness — which some would call great taste, or vision? — can’t be taught anyway; combine it with a network of incredible craftspeople, and you have Barnes, and the GSL show, in a nutshell.

Some of the works on view were extensions, in a way, of his solo show at Emma Scully Gallery in New York in 2023; the precision machined aluminum and steel, the carpets made in collaboration with Shame Studios. That show was also the first time Barnes worked with chunky cast glass (inspired in part by a Perriand/Corbusier/Jeanneret table), which he revived in this show in the form of a striking sculptural side table that’s visible on the left in the first image above. But in addition to that table, I felt especially excited about new gestures like the gigantic chaise longue on hand-carved marble feet, the blood-red cast-glass-frame floor mirror, and the double-sided yellow/green room divider lined in custom de Gournay silk paper. Most people’s aspirational fantasies these days run to sports cars, fancy handbags, or whatever ridiculous thing the Kardashians are doing and wearing. For me it’s a club chair with an outsized metal “shark fin” protruding from the back, any day of the week.

Ravenhill Studio’s New Palette Looks to Driftwood, Desert Plants, and California Light

Ravenhill Studio’s classic fixtures have been newly reimagined in shades of brick, beeswax, and agave.

In the 16 years since L.A. designer Brendan Ravenhill founded his eponymous lighting brand, it has trafficked pretty much entirely in a single, limited palette: black, white, brass, steel, glass, wood. You could blame the fact that Ravenhill himself is entirely color-blind, but the real reason probably has more to do with the market, and the fact that essential Scandi-inflected neutrals will always be more appealing to more people than a bold, color-drenched statement fixture. Which is why us color-loving weirdos are happy to report that, as of this month, Ravenhill and his team have flung caution to the wind to launch the new Ravenhill Studio in Color collection, which reimagines their greatest hits in a (muted) rainbow of four solid hues. Each has a natural reference, apparent in its name: beeswax, agave, brick, and canvas. And each was photographed in the brand’s Glassell Park HQ in the center of a Shaker-style armature hung with the elemental materials that inspired them. Some might raise an eyebrow at the inclusion on that list of canvas, shown here, which is essentially just a warm beige, but Ravenhill makes a compelling case: It channels “bleached bone and driftwood on California beaches,” a little more evocative than white alone. Rather than dazzling people, he explains, “we wanted our colors to take them to places they already know.” In other words they’re fun but familiar, a gentle coax out of the comfort zone and into something new.

Sandie Roy Saul Has Built a (Rentable) Universe Around Her French Flea-Market Finds

Top: a bathroom and bedroom inside 34 rue Louise Émilie, which can be rented through the high-end booking platform Boutique; bottom: objects from Editions du 34. Photos: Sight Unseen, Karel Ballas

In our book, How to Live With Objects, we argue that the best interiors aren’t the most perfectly composed or expensively outfitted ones, but the ones that reflect the personal styles, tastes, and histories of their owners. If you fill a space with objects you’re most drawn to, objects that tell stories, you can share those stories with anyone you invite inside. That’s what was on my mind when I had the privilege, earlier this month, of spending a few nights at 34 rue Louise Émilie in Paris, a classic Haussmannian apartment in the Pigalle neighborhood that’s available for rent through Boutique: that I had walked into the story of Sandie Roy Saul, who clearly loves objects just as much as we do. Roy Saul ran a high-profile fashion and lifestyle PR firm in Paris for decades before leaving it all behind to pursue a more creative life, starting by purchasing the apartment I stayed in and filling it with the spoils of her vintage-collecting obsession, from clawfoot bathtubs and 1930s velvet fringe chairs to silver goblets and 19th-century oil paintings. In 2023 she opened the home as a rental, an events space, and a calling card for her interior design services, and then she launched Editions du 34, which makes the little universe she’s created inside 34 rue Louise Émilie available to everyone.

The centerpiece of Editions du 34 is the Lacquer Collection, which launched in March, and at first, as I interacted with its ornately styled pieces all over the apartment during my stay — candle sconces and lamps in the bedroom, soap dishes and towel racks in the bathroom, vases and champagne buckets in the bar room — I assumed they were all newly crafted objects meant to channel French antiques. But Roy Saul is actually living my dream life, scouting them all from flea markets and estate sales before having a local workshop drench their baroque flourishes in monochromatic lacquer, some in black or white and some in vibrant teals and burgundies. When she’s able to source multiples, the objects might match; most are one of a kind. They conjure not only her world, but the feeling of living in a charming 150-year-old apartment on a perfect block in Paris, even if you can’t visit hers.

Dive Into These Three Summer Exhibitions That Each Celebrate a Different Natural Material

Top, Ian Collings’s new solo show at Blunk Space, exploring stone; bottom left, a tile painting from Fran Aniorte’s ceramics show in Istanbul; bottom right, a piece from Axel Chay’s new collection of hand-cast aluminum objects, on view in Saint-Tropez. Photos: Chris Grunder, Charles Thefaine, Maral Fard

Summer is usually low season for art and design exhibitions, but this year that doesn’t seem to be the case — we’re drowning in great materials over here. This week, three solo shows in particular stood out to us, all happening now in three different countries, by three different designers, working in four different natural materials: stone, wood, clay, and aluminum. First — at the Blunk Space gallery in Point Reyes, California — Ian Collings has ventured outside of his comfort zone for “The Out There Is Right Here.” He left his Ojai home for a 10-day residency in JB Blunk’s former home, not far from the gallery, where he sourced local stone for his sculptures. But he also communed with the work of Blunk and his contemporaries while there, finding inspiration for hybrid sculptures that incorporate wood as well as a new series of wooden wall pieces.

Across the globe in Istanbul, SU fave Fran Aniorte has just opened a show at Art On gallery called “Balearic Constellations,” which includes all manner of hand-painted ceramic objects inspired loosely by the landscape of southern Spain, as well as its famed progeny: “In this territory, the legacy of Picasso and Miró is not approached as a reference but as a living energy, a celebration of the hand, of imperfection,” the gallery writes. The tile painting I chose above is maybe not the most emblematic of those motifs (I just thought it was so pretty), but you can see more here.

Finally, the Marseille-based designer Axel Chay is dropping his new collection, “Météore,” at Isabelle Castanier’s at-home gallery in Saint-Tropez, where it’s part of a larger group exhibition. It consists of seven fluid-looking cast-aluminum objects, like this retro-futuristic pyramidal floor lamp inset with various colored aventurine stones. There’s also a small pyramidal jewelry box in the same language that looks like a more sophisticated version of something you’d find at a witchy crystal shop, and a cylindrical chrome table lamp with vintage Italian vibes that’s diagonally “sliced” to reveal more stones.

Need Some Interior Inspiration? You’ll Always Find It in Paris.

From top, by row: The Pantheon apartment by Rudy Guénaire, the latest Pied a Terre rental by Maxime Bousquet, and a townhouse by Agathe Marimbert. Photos: Ludovic Balay, Pat Madeleine, Oracle

It didn’t take my recent trip to Paris to convince me that a lot of the best interiors right now are French, which tracks considering how European Art Deco and 19th-century everything are everyone’s current reference points, even here in New York. You could browse all the ones we’ve featured on Sight Unseen lately to see what I mean, or consider this little roundup of three recent examples: an apartment by Rudy Guénaire, a townhouse by Agathe Marimbert, and the latest Pied a Terre rental, by Maxime Bousquet.

Guénaire’s Pantheon project is a renovation of a 1920s apartment and while it’s full of custom furniture by the designer as well as vintage and contemporary pieces from top Parisian galleries, the most important thing to discuss are the immaculate stainless steel and textured-glass doors to the bedroom — shown from the back above, where they’re lined in burl — plus a stainless steel entry alcove that references Gae Aulenti’s Palazzo Pucci in Florence, of which the designers note: “It was from that moment on that stainless steel became synonymous with the avant-garde.” Preach!

The new Pied a Terre apartment is actually three apartments, in the brand’s most ambitious project to date. It gave Bousquet carte blanche to go wild inside the spaces, and he did, designing mostly custom furniture and blending it with inspirations from Paul Dupré-Lafon, Marc du Plantier, and the floral rug known for its use in Serge Gainsbourg’s house — plus the all-navy tiled bathroom above. Last but not least is Marimbert’s 2,500 sqft townhouse, yet another Art Deco–inspired space in an Art Deco building, but this one also has a fun color-blocking thing going on, plus an unexpected California-inspired, almost boho-inflected living room. Our vote goes to the mint-green kitchen, with its lovely contrast between postmodern-style furniture and rustic ceramic sconces. Thank you Paris for never failing to inspire.

Editor’s List

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT:

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You may have heard me swoon before over the wooden picture frames of Apohli, the London/Copenhagen practice of Lewis Graham and Martina Branchetti (I’ve also been known to swoon over their other objects, like lights and magazine racks). Last week I spied this pretty wooden hand mirror they posted on their Instagram, which they consider a continuation of those frame ideas — they made it as a one-off during a week spent at Branchetti’s family’s country house in the mountains of Tuscany, and named it after her nonna, Marta, but we confirmed that they’d be willing to make more to sell to all of you if you ask nice!

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I didn’t mean to stack up the mirror content here, but I also spotted this gem on Instagram: a toast-shaped wall mirror by Cali ceramicist Morgan Peck. While I’m referring to it as toast-shaped (and colored, to be fair!), what’s so great about it is that it’s not SO toast-shaped as to be kitschy or silly; it suggests toast, in the most subtle and delightful of ways, but also has a strong Art Nouveau feel, and is just as sophisticated as the other mirrors Peck makes. I think the seams from the segments coming together make it more visually interesting, too.

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I hadn’t heard of the ceramics studio Grau Ceramica before I reported, last week, on Lisbon Design Week; this beautiful object happened to be tossed into a press kit for one of the group shows as an example of participants’ prior work. I pulled it immediately to show you here — it’s part of Grau’s Futurista collection, launched a year ago, and while there’s no sign of that collection on their site, could be worth reaching out to inquire. The glazing is so nice, it almost looks like wood.

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Last mirror of the week! This wood-frame, postmodern-ish mirror is by Paris’s Atelier Jonathan Cohen, and while it’s hard to see in this image (which is taken from an interior project by Eric de Thoisy and Brahim Mouffok), its frame features Cohen’s signature hand-applied mottled ink patterning. You can see more photos of it here. I love the totally gratuitous adornments hanging off each side, almost like earrings.

News

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Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Glass House Summer Party for the first time — the annual picnic and arts celebration that raises funds for the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. In addition to the usual auction and lunch on the grounds, this year’s festivities featured performances curated by Saint Heron, the Solange Knowles–founded creative agency, with choreography by Kyle Abraham and music by Mary Lou Williams. There was also a Max Mara coffee and gelato stand, and a takeover of the house itself by Knoll and Dozie Kanu. Summer is the best time to visit the Glass House if you haven’t been — tour info is here, and sign up for their newsletter to snag tickets to next year’s party! We’ll see you there!

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Next week, Bonhams is holding its Modern Decorative Art + Design auction, and now that it has a space in New York, you can go view the lots in person (even just for fun?). I say skip all the Lalanne stuff and beeline for the Andre Sornay — how gorgeous are these cabinets?? This yellow Tommi Parzinger cabinet is also a stunner, and you know I’m fully drooling over the handles. This Martin Szekely table is fun, and last but not least this artwork is so interesting, looks like it’s a Venetian glass interpretation of a Jean Arp composition. $8k wouldn’t be terrible for something of that scale…

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If you’re a fan of PIN-UP magazine, and podcasts, watch this space for the launch next week of episode 155 of Time Sensitive, the podcast of The Slowdown, hosted by editor Spencer Bailey. He’ll be interviewing Felix Burrichter, PIN-UP’s founder, and knowing those two there’s going to be a lot of opinions shared, tea spilled, and compelling design-world topics discussed. Also adding to our queue this interview with Mira Nakashima about “keeping her father’s woodworking legacy alive.”

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As I alluded to above, lots of great exhibitions here in New York this summer, but this one at Sean Kelly caught my eye today — opening this weekend, it’s a show of sculptures by Cuban artist Magdiel García Almanza, made with hardwoods from salvaged from centuries-old colonial homes. The geometric yet fluid forms are playful yet reminiscent of midcentury sculpture. Worth a peek if you’re in Chelsea soon.